An Argument in Favor of Food Irradiation as a Solution to the Increase of Food Born Illnesses Essay

Food borne illnesses increase dramatically every year, causing death and financial waste in their wake (Shea N.P). Irradiation is the solution but skeptic criticism is implanting fear in the minds of uninformed consumers, consequently preventing the mountains of advantage this new technology has to offer. Skeptics would wait for thousands of so-called new studies to tell us the same thing the old studies told us rather than save lives now. In this paper I will show you that, despite these quarrels over little imperfections, irradiation is a highly regulated, safe way to destroy harmful microorganisms in food and that all proven advantages of food irradiation tower over the few baseless fears of ignorant critics. Each year nearly 80,000,000 people become ill, over 320,000 are hospitalized, and over 5,000 die, all due to food borne illnesses (Robertson N.P). According to Dr. Katherine Shea, a Professor at the University of North Carolina, the Nicholas School of the Environment, and the Medical School at Duke University, these numbers are increasing dramatically each year and the irradiation of food is by far the best solution (Shea N.P). Food irradiation can prevent millions of these food borne illnesses. Irradiation destroys Staphylococcus Aurous and Campylobacter Jejuni which together account for more than 2.6 million food borne illnesses. The irradiation of meat reduces salmonella factors by 99 percent (Lutter N.P). Food irradiation also destroys at least 99.9 percent of the most prominent pathogens such as E coli and listeria monocytogenes (Robertson N.P). These amazing numbers should be enough to persuade everyone to purchase irradiated products but critics say that along with destroying harmful microorganisms, irradiation destroys much of the nutrients in food. This is simply untrue. While the irradiation of food does cause some loss of nutrients, Shea writes that this nutrient loss is comparable to cooking, canning, pasteurizing, blanching, and any other form of heat processing (Shea N.P). The World Health Organization (WHO) says that...