Apr. 27, 2005 – A plant in Pennsylvania that irradiates food announced it is shutting down, to the delight of community members that had been fighting it for years. Though concerned citizens in Milford Township had consistently lost legal battles to prevent CFC Logistics from irradiating food at its warehouse facility, the company said it has voluntarily ended the program because there is not enough of a market for irradiated food.
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Touted as a measure to reduce harmful bacteria and other microorganisms from food, the food irradiation process exposes food to low levels of radioactivity. The US Centers for Disease Control have declared the process completely safe and denied that irradiation reduces the nutritional value of food or renders it radioactive.
But consumer advocacy groups question the validity of the science used by government officials to declare the process safe. The government watchdog Public Citizen, for instance, published in 2003 a review of the scientific literature on food irradiation that includes several instances in which humans and animals developed serious health problems after eating irradiated food.
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Citizens in Milford had fought the irradiation plant in their town because of health concerns related to irradiated food and because the company would have to transport and store radioactive materials in their town. They celebrated the announcement that CFC Logistics has shut down the irradiator, and, along with Public Citizen, urged the government and the company to work together to safely remove and clean up the remaining nuclear materials at the plant site.
