PRESS RELEASE
In Brussels November 24th, 2004


Good food doesn’t need irradiation!

With the occasion of the international week of action against food irradiation, we, organisations defending the consumers’ right and public health, struggling in favour of the environment and advocating for responsible and fair trade system reiterate our opposition to food irradiation. We support the international food irradiation campaign and the actions that have or will take place in Australia, Brazil, the United States, the Philippines and Canada to oppose the spread of irradiated food.

Irradiated food is of no interest for the consumers. On the contrary, several problems and threats are linked to food irradiation:
• According to recent studies, irradiation produces new compounds (alkylcyclobutanones) in food that have been linked to cancer promotion and genetic damage in rats and human cells;

• Irradiation destroys vitamins. As the shelf life increases, even more nutrients are lost;

• Food irradiation is often used as a substitute for good sanitary practices;

• Irradiation, by increasing the shelf life of food, encourages wasteful and costly transportation of food and delocalisation of production.

Thus we ask:
• The European council to consider the list of food that can be irradiated, voted on by the European Parliament in December 2002, as closed;

• The European Commission to allocate more research fundings on the toxicity of alkylcyclobutanones, as recommended by SCFS;

• The European Commission to give no new accreditation for irradiation facilities until food irradiation is scientifically proved to be safe; the Commission should neither accept new accreditation for facilities within the European union (for example it should not give an agreement for the facility in Hungary) nor in third countries (as in Turkey);

• WHO to withdraw its endorsement of food irradiation at any dose and to proceed to new research independently from the International Agency on Atomic Energy. The 1959 agreement between WHO and IAEA should be cancelled.

Contact:
European Food Irradiation Campaign: Morgan Ody, 0032 218 22 42, mody@citizen.org
For more information, please look at our website: www.irradiation.info/

The organisations taking part to the European Food Irradiation Campaign are:
European level organisations: Public Citizen Europe, Alliance of Social and Ecological Consumer Organisations (ASECO).
United Kingdom: The Food Commission
Denmark: Active Consumers Denmark.
Italy: Federconsumatori, Legamambiente, AIAB, Movimento dei Consumatori, ACU.
Organisations taking part to the french campaign: Confédération Paysanne, MDRGF, Amis de la Terre, Fédération Nature et Progrès, Réseau Sortir du Nucléaire, CRiiRAD, Biocoop, Action Consommation.