Doubt over irradiated fruit claim The Cairns Post/The Cairns Sun (Australia) May 17, 2004 Monday by: Duncan Paterson (Innisfail reporter) Farmers and other potential investors should be wary about putting their hard-earned capital into a proposed irradiation plant in the Far North, rural commentator and research consultant Bonny Bauer has warned. Ms Bauer said Horticultural Access Solutions  and part owners New Zealand fresh produce distributor Turner and Growers  were planning to build a plant in the heart of Cairns to irradiate tropical fruit for export to New Zealand and the US, despite increasingly hostile consumer resistance. She said Access chief executive Michael Daysh was pitching to growers a scenario in which they would have an open market for their produce in the United States. "What he fails to tell them is that America would not accept their produce unless growers have a comprehensive environmental management program in place," she said. "He quotes misleading 'science for hire' reports suggesting food treated by ionising radiation is safe for consumption. "These dodgy tactics were followed by legislative moves allowing labelling describing such products as treated by electronic or cold pasteurisation." Ms Bauer said despite 98 per cent of all submissions to the Federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry being opposed to lifting the 10-year moratorium on food irradiation in Australia, Food Standards Australia New Zealand had approved the technology for domestic intra  and interstate quarantine. "To complicate matters for growers, this move has opened Australia to the potential for a raft of imported irradiated tropical fruits," she said.