Actually, it was a command. Whether it would be intelligent or not is kind of beside the point once you have no other choices.

Yes or no? Cargill, or to be more precise its meat subsidiary Excel, already uses the process, although not widely.

But if irradiation became mandatory, instead of an optional good idea, your meat would be irradiated meat. End of story. This wouldn't really bother me, and maybe it wouldn't bother you. But maybe other consumers want a choice of some kind. People already choose to eat "organic" or unprocessed foods despite proven additional risk of disease. Their view is that the food is more nutritious. Should we make their organic "good ideas" mandatory for better health? Whose "good idea" is the best good idea? Who decides?

Where do you point the gun, Buck?

The opponents of food irradiation are largely nuts, but they have a right not to have it forced on them (unfortunately, they don't think I have a right as a consumer to choose it).

And when the one universal government-mandated solution turns out to stink for some reason, suddenly everybody is in trouble, not just those people that chose to use it.

Free markets work better than planned economies for a reason.