Money woes blast irradiated food plans The New Zealand Herald February 2, 2004 By JAMES GARDINER Plans to import irradiated food have suffered a significant setback with the collapse of United States company SureBeam Corporation. But "nuked" food may yet be on the menu. The Government - with Australia - has already declared it safe to eat and is about a month away from a decision on whether irradiation is a sufficiently effective pest-destruction method. New Zealand's biggest produce company, Turners and Growers, risks losing the money it put up - it will not say how much - to work on plans to build $10 million irradiation plants first in Cairns, Australia, then in Auckland. San Diego-based SureBeam announced plans for a joint venture with Guinness Peat Group-controlled Turners and Growers two years ago but the New Zealand company ended up footing the entire bill for arranging clearances for SureBeam's electron beam and x-ray methods for pest destruction. Irradiation is an alternative to heat treatment and chemical fumigants but is controversial because of fears that the molecular structure of food may be altered and eating it could be harmful. There is also doubt about whether it will kill all species of fruitfly. Previous attempts by Melbourne company Steritech to build an irradiation plant in Auckland failed in the face of strong community opposition in 1987. A year later the Environment Ministry recommended prohibiting irradiation as a treatment method for any food sold here. But that was reversed in 2001 when the intergovernmental Australia-New Zealand Food Standards Authority declared irradiated herbs and spices could be safely eaten. The authority later approved SureBeam's application to use irradiation for a range of Queensland tropical fruits to be exported. The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry is about a month away from deciding whether to approve the SureBeam method as sufficient to prevent insect pests, particularly fruitfly, entering the country on mangoes and other fruit. SureBeam, a public company spun off from defence contractor Titan in 2001, sought bankruptcy last month after its stock lost 95 per cent of its value in a year. It had been delisted from the Nasdaq stock market in October for failing to file quarterly earnings reports, was under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and faces class action lawsuits by investors who say they were misled about its financial position. Turners and Growers managing director Michael Dossor said there was still the possibility of a group of senior SureBeam staff in the US buying the rights to the technology and supplying the equipment, possibly cheaper than previously expected. That and the increase in the New Zealand dollar were likely to mean the plants could be built for under $10 million, Mr Dossor said. Irradiation opponents Friends of the Earth welcomed the setback. "From what I can gather, even the claims about their technology are dubious," said spokesman Bob Tait. Green Party health spokeswoman Sue Kedgley said the finance problems reflected SureBeam's lack of integrity.