In this age of nuclear power and weapons, we’re told that the harmless ‘happy atom’ is all around us and might be dangerous but because we can’t see him this then means, “Oh, just relax. There’s really nothing to worry about. It’s all completely safe.”
All we can say to that is, if you are willing to trust your government and nuclear power companies, then you are putting yours and your family’s life in their hands.
From bullets to bread, it’s important to know who is responsible for injecting radioactivity into your personal and community environments…
THE JOYS OF NUCLEAR WASTE
The history of “recycled” nuclear wastes as military DU munitions is relatively well known and dates to the early 1970′s. NATO analysts had reported that the Soviet military had developed armor plating for tanks that NATO ammunition could not penetrate. The quest to develop high-penetration anti-tank munitions quickly focused very dense (higher than lead) uranium wastes from “civil” nuclear power, that are also pyrotechnic or quickly inflammable and explosive on impact, and are easily machined into complex nose cones and sheaths for shells and projectiles. Since that time, DU munitions have grown to be held and used by nearly all major armed forces of the planet. Military analysts identify about 78 nations presently possessing DU munitions, that now cover a huge range of ordnance types and sizes, including anti-building, anti-aircraft and anti-personnel weapons.
WHO’S NUKING YOUR FOODS?
Food that is pulled out of a radioactive environment, like seafood – is one thing. Yes, it’s dangerous, but more than likely fisherman had no idea their catch was contaminated. Risks posed by the Fukushima nuclear meltdown to the Pacific seafood stocks are just now coming into view. But imagine if the fisherman dosed their catch with radiation before they sent it to your local supplier? That’s also happening, but the irradiation of foods is much more widespread than people think…
Less well known but certainly a larger threat, the use of sometimes highly irradiated, as well as deadly toxic nuclear wastes in the world food industry has massively grown since the 1990s. The reasons why so little public information on irradiated Frankenfoods is new normal are easy to guess, and result in no labeling requirement in most countries and no in-store labeling of which foods on sale are irradiated and which are not. Food products labeled ‘organic’ or ‘bio” can easily contain irradiated ingredients, or shelf products labeled ‘organic’ can be treated by radiation by wholesalers or major supermarket chains before being placed on sale.
The US FDA and other national food and drugs administrations sideline and in some cases deny any major risk to public health from systematic use of very high radiation doses in food. A typical statement published by the US FDA is:
“Despite its limited use in the past, use of food irradiation is increasing as consumers are beginning to appreciate the benefits of irradiated food”.
The US FDA however provides a short list of some regular food industry uses of high radiation doses. Here’s what you need to know about the radiation which passes through your foods:
http://www.fda.gov/food/ingredientspackaginglabeling/irradiatedfoodpackaging/ucm081050.htm
The doses indicated are in kiloGrays (thousand Gray). In this short non-exclusive listing of irradiated foods, the mostly-gamma radiation used starts at 1 kiloGray which is equivalent to over 30 million average chest x-ray doses or 2,000 times the LD50 (lethal dose for 50% of persons exposed) human lethal dose. As the list above shows, doses can attain the fantastic level of 30 kiloGray (60,000 times the LD50 human lethal dose). These foods are being “nuked” for our supposed protection.
ORWELL’S LAST SUPPER
As Sayer Ji (Greenmedinfo.com) and other activists note, this “George Orwell Supper” can easily include certified-organic food products. Buyers of these “green” foods undertake to pay higher prices, often about 30% more than conventional food products because they hope or believe that even if the organic food they buy does not have an especially higher vitamin, mineral and phyto-nutrient content, it will not have suffered intense further processing on its journey to the table. This in major part explains why buying organic has grown in many countries and attracts the educated consumer.
Unfortunately almost all the developed world’s food and public health authorities and regulatory agencies support and actively promote food irradiation. The US FDA actively supports and promotes the use of Cobalt-60 directly obtained from civil nuclear power plants, for so-called “electronic pasteurization”, extended shelf lives, uniformized food product appearance and the capability to not use chemical food additives, which will require labeling and will cause educated higher-income shoppers to avoid the food products so treated.
Several administrations further promote nuclear irradiation of foods on a systematic basis by creating a false dichotomy between “food additive” products and treatments, and “pasteurization” to describe intense irradiation producing entirely lifeless and slightly radioactive, as well as toxic foodstuffs. This Orwellian logic is dominant in all developed nations and WTO (World Trade Organization) regulations relating to food products impose no additional radiation checks on food trade except in highly specific “emergency contexts” such as Japanese food exports following the Fukushima disaster.
IRRADIATED FOODS ARE INFERIOR
Completely absent from all regulatory agency information on food irradiation or “pasteurisation”, but well known to food scientists, radiation biologists and microbiologists, food irradiation destroys much of the nutritional quality of food. Microrganisms, for example, avoid eating even very slightly irradiated foods and nutrients. Irradiation produces a large range of toxic and carcinogenic byproducts. These include benzene, formaldehyde, formic acid, and a series of complex organic chemicals such as the alklycyclobutanoes. All of these side product chemicals are damaging to human health.
Much more insidious in its economic, social and environmental impacts, systematic use of intensely radioactive materials in “farming”, food processing, and final sale, enables and encourages “trash farming”. Fundamentally unsafe farming practices are enabled. Multiple examples exist, starting with the systematic use in “trash farming” of urban and industrial mixed sewage effluent as a nutrient, made “safe” by intense irradiation. Sewage from intensive animal rearing, which is contaminated by the very high levels of antibiotics used in this “Belsen farming”, are quickly irradiated using massive doses of radiation from nuclear power plant wastes, avoiding other more-expensive treatment and separation of toxic materials, chemicals and biochemicals in the sewage. The widespread and systematic use of these low-cost “fertilizers and nutrients”, in crop farming and market gardening production of salads and greens directly results in the growth of virulent new strains of antibiotic resistant bacteria. In turn, their existence is used as the reason for further or more intense radiation treatment of farming wastes.
Irradiated food products are now the preferred choice by global supermarket operators due to their long shelf life and uniform appearance. This directly enables the growth of food system globalization, from upstream production to downstream distribution. The transnationals operating in this domain have huge political leverage for the pursuit of their strategy to reduce or eliminate the national sovereignty of producer countries, and the constitutional rights and public health of consumers.
TRUST US: ‘NUCLEAR WASTE IS BENIGN’
The nuclear power and uranium mining industry, at all times linked with the industrial-military complex, is obliged to operate a permanent publicity and propaganda blitz to the effect that nuclear energy is totally unrelated to nuclear weapons, uranium and other radioactive materials are harmless, nuclear wastes are easily managed – and the complete reverse of ecological disaster, can bring nicely packaged uniform and pasteurized long life food products to our dining table. Nuclear wastes can therefore become “beneficial”, and with no need to talk about the DU weapons industry, another large consumer of nuclear wastes. Nuclear waste is transformed. It can even be called a “food therapeutic” agent with a distinct market value for the food industry.
Upstream research in the nuclear-related industry to develop new and additional uses for nuclear waste focusing the food industry now include the large scale production of radiation-modified viruses and bacteria for crop spraying. One major goal is to produce long life semi-dormant, bacteria-specific viruses which can spring into action whenever the target bacteria proliferate.
This outright genetic modification, upstream, is however excluded by administrations with a highly publicized offical goal of reducing (if not eliminating) GM foods, notably the European EFSA food safety authority and the related EU law on food safety 1169/2011. Recent European-US trade disputes relating to GM rice produced in the US (and called “basmati rice”) did not concern its name, but the genetic modification of this rice. At the same time, irradiated rice is imported to Europe and sold on a daily basis. According to several environmental NGOs and food experts, spontaneous genetic modification due to irradiated shipping, storage, packaging and distribution networks for foods such as rice are now unavoidable, making EU-US trade disputes on this subject a charade.
Food quality and nuclear wastes are an oxymoron. State sponsored promotion of food irradiation can rightly be considered the largest food experiment ever performed in all recorded history. Downstream, in the supermarket or local store, it is completely impossible for the final consumer to know what radiation treatment or treatments have been utilized on their purchased food, marked “organic” or not.
This is a minefield of potential and real health risks, and one day we can hope, liabilities for the corporations and companies which have produced Orwell’s Last Supper.
