Irradiated food deal signed before ANZFA drops flag - Greens
24 February 2002 Irradiated food deal signed before ANZFA drops flag
Green Party Safe Food spokesperson Sue Kedgley today said Turners and Growers have jumped the gun in signing off a deal
to import irradiated tropical fruits from Queensland.
"Turners and Growers have signed up to this deal before the Australian New Zealand Food Authority has even made a final
decision about whether to allow the importation of irradiated tropical fruits into New Zealand: mango, papaya
breadfruit, carambola, custard apple, litchi, longan, mangosteen and rambutan.
"Either Turners and Growers are taking a big commercial risk in launching this joint venture so early, or they have had
a nod and a wink from ANZFA that it will get the green light shortly," said Ms Kedgley.
The Herald has revealed that Turners and Growers are working with SureBeam Corporation, an affiliate of defense
contractor Titan Corp, to build an electron beam and x-ray facility in Northern Australia and import irradiated tropical
fruits into New Zealand.
SureBeam uses linear accelerator 'E-beam' technology, originally developed for the 'Star Wars' programme, to shoot food
with a stream of electrons travelling at the speed of light.
Ms Kedgley said food irradiation was a highly controversial technique which damages the molecular structure of food,
destroys vitamins and nutrients in food and forms unique chemicals that are suspected to cause cancer and birth defects.
Ms Kedgley said importing irradiated tropical fruit from Queensland was an idiotic idea. "Consumers don't want to eat
fresh fruit that has been irradiated," she said.
"And why on earth would we want to import tropical fruit from Queensland anyway, when it is crawling with fruit flies -
often called the 'foot and mouth' of horticulture - and when we can get the same tropical fruits from other countries
which don't need to use this controversial technology."
"If any fruit fly larvae managed to get through the irradiation process, we would face a huge horticultural disaster,"
said Ms Kedgley.
Ms Kedgley said she was also concerned that the ANZFA proposal would allow tropical fruit to be irradiated at much
higher doses than even the USA allowed. And irradiated fruit would not be individually labelled -there would only be a
requirement for a sign near to a package of fruit indicating it had been 'treated with ionising electrons.' Many
consumers would not understand this meant the fruit had been irradiated, she said.
ENDS