Did the spinach say it wants to be irradiated?

Personally, my mom used to mix it in with my mashed potatoes, which just turned into an unrecognizable lumpy mound that was a strange shade of green. However, when I started cooking for myself, I realized just how delicious spinach (and brussel sprouts, and lima beans...) is. But then along comes an E. coli outbreak in 2006 that might have turned off recent and future spinach converts, putting spinach back in that scary place in some minds. And now, the FDA has given the green light for zapping spinach (and other leafy greens) with ionizing radiation. So now we are going to have radioactive spinach?! Back to the scary place...

According to this report http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iA5hZT7HxWkBxoW1U2IS-nAOoq-wD92MPDG8
from the Associated Press, the Food and Drug Administration has approved the practice of using radiation to sterilize spinach, lettuce, and other leafy greens. This technique has been been used for treating meat, especially ground beef, for quite some time, but there was concern that zapping vegetables, especially greens, would decrease the quality of the produce.

As mentioned earlier, the 2006 E. coli outreak in spinach was widely publicized and caused consumers to question the safety of not only the meat but now also the vegetables they were buying. The salmonella outbreak among tomatoes this summer most likely added to the numbers and volume of those who were pushing to expand irradiation techniques to the processing of vegetables. So far, the FDA has just ruled on leafy greens (lettuce was another target of recalls fairly recently) and is deciding on what other produce can and should be added to the X-ray room.

Yes, consumers do want to be assured that their spinach doesn't contain E. coli bacteria just as much as they don't want their ground beef to harbor mad cow disease. In the highly mechanized world of meat processing, the addition of more technology and machinery isn't exactly out of place. However, fruit and vegetable farmers typically don't have such a consolidated processing structure and don't enjoy the subsidies that can help defray production costs. And what about organic farmers? If the larger corporate farms embrace using radiation in the name of food safety, and convince the public that doing so is necessary, are the smaller farmers going to be able to compete?

Some think that more mechanisms and more technology are needed to ensure the safety and integrity of our food system. However, slapping a band-aid on a a giant wound isn't going to make it stop bleeding just the same as zapping some spinach isn't going to stop E. coli from getting into the food system.

Leave the spinach alone! Popeye would not approve of how spinach is being treated here.