USDA Approves Irradiated Meat for Schools

USDA Approves Irradiated Meat for National School Lunch Program

Public Citizen Press Release
May 29, 2003
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For Immediate Release:
Contact:
Patty Lovera (202 )454-5132
Tony Corbo (202) 454-5131

Approval of Irradiated Meat for National School Lunch Program Is Wrong
Decision

Statement by Wenonah Hauter, Director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass
Energy and Environment Program

Despite thousands of comments to the federal government from parents,
teachers and children nationwide opposing irradiated meat in the
National School Lunch Program (91 percent of those commenting were
against it), the government today ignored the will of its constituents
and approved the use of irradiation for the federal nutrition program.
By offering schools the option of purchasing irradiated meat for school
lunches, which feed 27 million children each year, the U.S. Department
of Agriculture (USDA) could become the largest distributor of irradiated
food in the world.

Beginning in January 2004, children who participate in the federal
program will become guinea pigs in a government experiment that has
neglected parental concerns and disregarded numerous studies that show
the potentially harmful health effects of eating irradiated food. This
horrendous decision benefits the meat industry at the expense of
society's most vulnerable citizens - our children. Approving irradiated
meat for school cafeterias nationwide means the USDA is willing to put
our children's health at risk to help cover up the meat industry's
sanitation failures. Prioritizing industry's influence over the safety
of those it feeds is not just a bad decision - it is an error in moral
judgment.

Because federal law does not require labeling of irradiated food served
in schools, restaurants, hospitals and similar venues, irradiated meat
served in school cafeterias need not be labeled. This makes it
impossible for parents to know what school cafeterias are feeding their
children and is a blatant violation of parents' right to know.

More importantly, the children most likely to eat food purchased
through the school lunch program are from lower-income families who
cannot afford to send their children to school with homemade lunches.
These children must depend on food provided by government nutrition
programs. If irradiated meat ends up on their lunch trays at schools,
they don't have the option of refusing it.

Irradiation is not an acceptable antidote for food safety problems.
From strengthening government meat inspection to addressing the
appalling disrepair in many school cafeterias, there is much that should
be done to improve the safety of food served to our nation's children at
school. But using the purchasing power of the federal government to
bail out a struggling industry and serving this questionable product to
children have no place in a sensible food safety plan.

To read Public Citizen's comments to the USDA on irradiated food school

lunch program, please go to
http://www.citizen.org/documents/schoollunchprogramcomments.pdf. To
read a fact sheet on irradiation, please go to
http://www.citizen.org/documents/opposeradfood.pdf.

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