Current situation of food irradiation practice in U.S.A

It is essential that private food companies adopt the process and retail stores sell irradiated food products in order to popularize food irradiation among consumers. FOOD TECHnology Inc. (former Vindicator Inc.), which is founded in Florida 1992 for the purpose of decontamination of fruit flies infected in Oranges using 60Co gamma-irradiation, and Carrot Top, which has been selling irradiated foods since 1992, are well known to be actively involved in PA activity of irradiated foods. Carrot Top is now strongly interested in selling tropical fruits from Hawaii, which has been prohibited to ship from Hawaii to the mainland without decontamination treatment by US government because of fruit fly infestation. They got a temporal permit for the shipment of those fruits with irradiation at Chicago. FOOD TECHnology Inc. irradiates chicken, tomatoes, strawberries and mushrooms. Foods for hospitalized patients and astronauts are also irradiated at FOOD TECHnology Inc.. All food supply for the 'Space Shuttle' program has been provided. Recently they began to irradiate frozen shrimps and salmons. Carrot Top says that irradiated food items gain popularity among their customers although they changed the information transfer method from news letter to news paper advertisement as well as minimizing the description in the store. They noted that the goods sold well whether or not they are irradiated if they are fresh, good-looking and reasonable in price. FOOD TECHnology also commented that food industries has become more friendly towards food irradiation and they petitioned FDA for clearance of beef irradiation to decontaminate E. coli 0157:H7, but the private companies still hesitated to pick up this process therefore we need more efforts of PR. (J.P.N.)