On the occasion of the close of the World Food Summit in Rome, Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program has issued the following statement. Also find attached a new fact sheet outlining why food irradiation is not a solution for ending world hunger. (This can also be found on the web at http://www.citizen.org/documents/RadFoodnotfeedWorld.pdf) For more information, questions on food irradiation in your country, or to find out how to be involved in the opposition to food irradiation, please contact me at the above email address, or write to [email protected]. In solidarity, Jennifer Peterson Public Citizen *** The Failings of the World Food Summit Statement by Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program 13 June 2002 Food Irradiation will not solve World Hunger Today marks the end of the World Food Summit: Five Years Later, held in Rome this week to reassess the commitment to halve global hunger by 2015. Although nations around the world have renewed their pledge to reduce hunger, their plans of action fall short of addressing the true humanitarian needs of the more than 800 million people starving around the world. Corporate-driven trade and biotechnology fail to solve, and indeed, may aggravate the root causes of hunger: disproportionate misallocation of resources, inadequate social policies, and displacement caused by poverty and war. However, the incongruity between well-meaning overall aims and the questionable interests behind actual work plans is nothing new, and one need go no further than the World Food Summit's host for evidence. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has a mandate to "raise levels of nutrition and standards of living, to improve agricultural productivity, and to better the condition of rural populations."1 It aims to do so by "promoting development that does not degrade the environment and is technically appropriate, economically viable and socially acceptable."2 The FAO allegedly places the alleviation of poverty and hunger and the pursuit of food security at the heart of its endeavors. Why then, would the FAO endorse food irradiation, an inappropriate technology that runs counter to the FAO's purported noble aims? Founded in 1945, the FAO has been a major force behind the establishment, development, and expansion of food irradiation since the early 1960s. In cahoots with the World Health Organization (WHO) and masterminded by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the FAO has promoted food irradiation as a means of dealing with the problems of world hunger. Honing in on the seemingly quick fixes of extending shelf-life and reducing post-harvest loss by killing insects and pathogens, the FAO has apparently overlooked the true causes of hunger, as well as the multitude of problems that food irradiation brings. High on the list of food irradiation's flaws is the ongoing debate over its safety for human consumption. Numerous scientific studies have shown adverse effects in test animals fed irradiated food, including cancer, genetic mutations, stillbirths, organ malfunction, nutritional deficiencies, and other serious health problems. Moreover, a new class of chemicals called cyclobutanones, a by-product of irradiation not found naturally in any food, has been shown to cause cellular and genetic damage in human and rat cells and promote the development of cancer in rats. This concern is so alarming that it has effectively held up recent attempts to expand food irradiation legislation at European and international levels. The controversy over the safety of irradiated food should inspire the FAO to rethink prescribing it as a recipe for feeding the world. Just as significant, irradiation depletes many of the vitamins and nutrients in food. The synergistic combination of loss incurred by irradiation, increased storage time, and cooking can result in food practically devoid of any nutritional value. Now how is this going to relieve starvation? Irradiation is an expensive, highly industrialized process that depends on mass production and corporate consolidation to be feasible. Such an approach entails mono-culture cash crops, massive environmental damage, economic ruin for local communities, and agricultural dumping on foreign markets, and is in short, a catalyst for increased poverty and hunger. Moreover, irradiation's ability to kill contaminating pathogens panders to the endemic shortcomings of large-scale agribusiness: unhygienic and substandard food. The spread of food irradiation, as encouraged by the FAO, will increase the percentage of potentially dangerous and nutritionally inadequate food around the world. Moreover, the business dynamics and policy trends essential to the growth of food irradiation undermine the FAO's fundamental goal of ending hunger. Rather than endorsing this inappropriate and counterproductive technology, the FAO should focus its resources on supporting strategies that truly address poverty and hunger: land reform, small-scale and bio-diverse farming, improved social services - in sum, policies that foster a truly sustainable and equitable world. Food irradiation, like genetically modified food, has no place in sustainable development, fair trade, food sovereignty, or the interests of the global population's health and well-being. If the FAO is serious about ending global hunger and making the world a better, healthier place for all, it must reassess its mistakes of the past, renew its pledge to reduce world hunger, and take a firm stand against food irradiation.:
