Food irradiation is one of those hidden agenda topics, harmless on the surface--deadly below. Anyone with the slightest scientific training knows that irradiated food is perfectly safe to consume, but that does not mean food irradiation is safe. Having worked as a propagandist for the nuclear power industry, I had been trained in these issues, and how to present the industry side of the story. A firm trying to get local approval for their Cobalt-60 food irradiation facility had been running a very clever public relations campaign designed to sidetrack the public debate to an issue where they knew they could win: that irradiated food was ok to eat. A classic distraction campaign. I wrote this letter to a Florida paper over a decade ago and I have every reason to believe it played a major role in putting that food irradiation company out of business and running them out of my town for good. I'm very proud of it.

The debate over whether or not farm produce should be preserved by irradiation (Tribune, Business, June 29) seems to be more successful at misleading the public than educating it.

Whether or not irradiation taints food is irrelevant. The real issues are where are the radio-isotopes used for preservation going to be manufactured? How will they be stored, transported, used and safely disposed of when spent? Who is going to regulate this industry? How will the typical agricultural worker be trained to handle these substances? How can we ensure that these materials are not hijacked by terrorists or even lost in the mail?

The only applicable experience we have in this area is the field of nuclear medicine. But here the number of users is small; the amounts of radio-isotopes required are tiny by comparison, and the individuals handling the material are all highly trained professionals. The potential market in agribusiness is hundreds of times larger and will require the handling of deadly radiation sources by seasonal farm laborers.

Meeting the demand for additional radio-isotopes for agriculture will create more, not less, nuclear waste.

The argument that the required materials could be recycled from nuclear power plant wastes is technically correct, but criminally misleading. High-level wastes (spent fuel) are so dangerous to handle that it will be cheaper and safer to produce agricultural radio-isotopes the same way medical radio-isotopes are produced: neutron absorption by stable substances in specialized nuclear reactors (that's right, more nukes).

The use of nuclear radiation in food preservation is technically feasible, and in my opinion, perfectly harmless. But the application of this technology on a large scale cannot be accomplished without massive government regulation funded at public expense.

Perhaps these issues could be discussed in future Tribune reports. The current debate, limited as it is to safety and market issues, ignores the public policy aspects that will arise if the technology becomes widespread.