020801 Mounting Burger Recalls Highlight Irradiation Fix

Hutchinson, Minn., population 14,000, is about the last place anyone would look for a solution to the latest round of dangers from contaminated hamburger meat. Yet, squeezed between a taxi company and beauty parlor on Main Street, a Dairy Queen restaurant is serving up beef that has been irradiated to eliminate E. coli and other bacteria that can cause deadly food poisoning.

Since February, when Dairy Queen became the first restaurant chain to announce it was experimenting with the controversial process, the company has expanded the sale of irradiated beef to more than 40 Minnesota stores. Customer reaction has been positive, according to independent restaurant owners and a customer survey.

Dairy Queen is at the vanguard of a small but growing national movement by restaurants and stores to sell beef that has been treated with low-dose radiation to kill dangerous bacteria, including E. coli. Omaha Steaks uses it for its mail-ordered hamburgers. A division of Sara Lee provides irradiated meat to 2,500 stores in 32 states. Kroger is trying it out in Illinois.

In the more than two years since the Agriculture Department approved the process for red meat, irradiation has proved to be safe and effective.

Even so, the vast majority of retail outlets still shun irradiation, fearing consumers don't want beef that's been ''zapped.''

The success story in Hutchinson shows those fears are unfounded. In fact, radiation reduces a major public health risk posed by contaminated beef that is not being solved with government meat inspections. Meat processor ConAgra's recall this month of 19 million pounds of hamburger meat contaminated with a lethal strain of E. coli -- the second largest recall ever -- was only the latest in a too-routine pattern.

This year, E. coli recalls have hit Montana, Missouri, California, North Dakota, Washington, Florida, North Carolina, Iowa, New Jersey and Michigan, which has had three recalls. The Centers for Disease Control says preventable food poisoning caused by E. coli and other bugs strikes 73,000 people a year, and kills dozens of them.

Despite those distressing numbers, environmental and consumer advocacy groups try to blunt the trend toward irradiation by playing up old stereotypes about Big Macs that glow in the dark. Many of their arguments about the health dangers are false:

* Irradiation obliterates important nutrients in food. The CDC says ''an overwhelming body of scientific evidence demonstrates that irradiation does not harm the nutritional value of food.''

* Irradiation might cause cancer or other long-term illnesses. Regulators in more than 30 countries concluded there is no such risk. So has the Food and Drug Administration, the American Medical Association and the World Health Organization.

* Research on irradiation is only sketchy. Hundreds of scientific studies have been conducted over several decades, and dozens of different foods have been safely irradiated since 1963, when the process was introduced for use on flour.

Expanded irradiation could prevent dozens of deaths and thousands of illnesses every year. Unfounded fears shouldn't stand in the way of giving consumers a burger they can bite into with confidence.

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