Comments on: Finicky moms

By: Ivory

Ivory — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 12:42:43 +0000

There is a reliable test for prions, produced by the Bay Area company Bio Rad. One slaughterhouse was going to use it to test all of their beef to put out a “prion free” product. Cattlegrowers refused to send them their animals and eventually, they dropped the idea.

By: Walter E. Wallis

Walter E. Wallis — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 15:54:40 +0000

“Martin said the California spinach outbreak appears to have been caused by contaminated cow manure used by organic producers. “A very low percentage of cattle are always infected by this strain of E. coli. If fresh manure from those cattle is used as fertilizer, there’s an outbreak in the making.” (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)”
Irradiate the manure.

By: Walter E. Wallis

Walter E. Wallis — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 15:35:52 +0000

If there were a reliable test for prions, slaughterhouses would leap to the chance. They suffer whenever there is a mad cow incident and would benefit greatly from such a test.
The Army has a half century of experience of irradiation in Stockton, and so the processes can hardly be considered experimental.

By: Ivory

Ivory — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 00:29:50 +0000

Let’s also not forget that the microbial nasties that cause this sort of problem would in some cases have a chance to survive and might develop some additional pathogenic traits as a result of the irradiation. This has been an issue with this type of sterilization for quite some time.

I like the idea of them doing what they’re doing. Investigating, ramping up testing and tossing out contaminated food. If only we could test for prions in beef. Alas - the slaughterhouses refuse to do it.

By: superdestroyer

superdestroyer — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 21:31:20 +0000

The radiation dose for to kill e-coli is about 1 megarad or 10,000 Gy. That level of dose creates a huge amount of ozone. The ozone reacts with the food. The 3.5 megarads used to inactivate anthrax turns paper down and destroys any magnetic material.

Markm,

The radiation cannot kill the cells in a fruit or vegetable bucause radiation kills cells that try to divide by mitosis.

By: markm

markm — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 21:17:53 +0000

Fresh fruits and vegetables are alive, at least in the sense that their cells are still respirating. Radiation will kill many of those cells. I’d expect “mushy” to be an understatement.

Radiation is generally OK for meat, milk, etc., because these products are not living.

By: Cardinal Fang

Cardinal Fang — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 19:11:06 +0000

Here’s a page from a group evidently generally in favor of food irradiation. It says:

“Examples of some food changes are: [....]changes in structure of certain foods too fragile to withstand the irradiation, for example, lettuce and other leafy vegetables turn mushy…”

By: Walter E. Wallis

Walter E. Wallis — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 17:31:12 +0000

Very easy to remove oxygen from the process.

By: superdestroyer

superdestroyer — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 10:53:58 +0000

Walter,

Irradiation of produce at the dose levels sufficient to inactivate Ecoli is very hard to do. Oxygen cannot be present when food is irradiated. It is relatively easy to irradiate ground beef or grond spices. It is almost impossbiel to do with fresh produce. (You cannot have oxygen present because the gamma rays or x-rays will ionize the oxygen which then reacts with the food that causes spoilage.)

By: Cardinal Fang

Cardinal Fang — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 04:40:02 +0000

Don’t confuse raw (unpasteurized) milk with organic milk. Most organic milk sold in the US is pasteurized. There’s a substantial market for organic milk, but evidently not much market for raw milk.