Irradiation of Food — Helping to Ensure Food Safety

In this issue of the Journal, Osterholm and Norgan (pages 1898–1901) present a convincing argument that physicians and other health care professionals, as health advocates, should also be advocates for the irradiation of foods to prevent the transmission of infection. The recent approval of irradiated hamburgers for school lunch programs in the United States has been met with unfounded claims by groups opposed to food irradiation that children are being used as experimental animals. Unfortunately, this campaign has influenced some school boards to deny their students the increased safety of irradiated foods.Research on methods to control foodborne pathogens and . . .