Accelerators vs. E. coli

From among the burgeoning variety of applications of particle accelerators, an American Physical Society committee last year chose new ones for a four-page expansion of the booklet Accelerators and Beams—Tools of Discovery and Innovation.  Representatives of APS’s Division of Physics of Beams included the page “Accelerators to beat food-borne illness.” Food-irradiation accelerators remain rare, and anecdotal evidence suggests that media consciousness of them remains rare too – but not nonexistent.

“Every week in the United States, about 100 people die from food-borne illness, even though electron accelerators can make food much safer, just as pasteurization makes milk much safer.” So says the new accelerator-booklet page. (Disclosure: I researched and drafted it.) The page continues:

Electron beams, or X-rays derived from them, can kill dangerous bacteria like E. coli, salmonella and listeria. Food irradiation could join pasteurization, chlorination and immunization as pillars of public health technology. But even though food irradiation is completely safe and does not degrade wholesomeness, nutritional value, quality or taste, consumer acceptance has been slow. That word irradiation makes people wary.

Much of the recent food-safety discussion in the New York Times and the Washington Post has ignored irradiation altogether, or has scanted it. The Times’s Nicholas Kristof’s 11 June column “When Food Kills” ends by calling only for “more comprehensive inspections in the food system, more testing for additional strains of E. coli, and more public education.” In the Times commentary “E. Coli Fallout: My Salad, My Health,” Elisabeth Rosenthal observes that “we we rely on the sanitary vigilance of a long chain of farmers, harvesters, baggers, shippers, and markets,” but doesn’t mention irradiation.

The subheadline on a Times editorial declares that the “lesson of Europe’s E. coli outbreak is that this country needs greater protection,” but the editors never mention accelerators or the other food-irradiation methods. Still, a Times letter to the editor two years ago did say:

In 2001, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that irradiating half the meat and poultry consumed in the United States would mean 900,000 fewer cases of food-borne illness and 350 fewer deaths each year. Unfortunately, irradiated meat and poultry can't be found on store shelves. For that you can blame a cowardly food industry and a cynical consumer movement, willing to sacrifice lives to further its antinuclear agenda.

In the Washington Post, a 15 June food-section front-page feature investigated the food-borne illness problem, and did mention irradiation. But the Wall Street Journal wins the prize in this media report’s arbitrary and entirely unscientific sampling. The WSJ recently offered both an editorial commending irradiation, including by electron beams, and a commentary that—if my accelerator-booklet service to APS qualifies me to proclaim it—does a very nice job of explaining and advocating for accelerators vs. E. coli.