Irradiation Disputants Differ on Test Results : Papaya Battle Is Over, but Who Won?

By MARK I. PINSKY

March 31, 1987 12 AM PT

Time Staff Writer

About the only thing both sides in the Great Papaya War agree on is that the latest battle is over.

On Sunday, members of the Orange County chapter of the Coalition to Stop Food Irradiation picketed an Albertson’s supermarket in Irvine where Hawaiian papayas treated with low-level radiation as a means to eradicate fruit-fly larvae were test marketed. Fruit with evidence of Oriental fruit fly infestation may not be imported into the mainland.

“We were not testing irradiation per se,” said Jonathan Noell, who conducted the Management Associates survey for the Papaya Administration Committee of Hawaii.

“Basically, what we wanted to do was to conduct a fair and unbiased consumer test,” Noell said, to determine whether shoppers preferred “tree-ripened fruit” that had been irradiated to kill fruit-fly infestation.

The test, Noell said, was a success.

But Beverly Jerkunica, founder of the Orange County coalition chapter, also claimed victory.

“I think we scored,” said Jerkunica, a Laguna Beach nutritionist and registered nurse. “I don’t think they sold any papayas after we got there.”

Jerkunica added that she had been assured that, as a result of the demonstration, no more irradiated produce would be sold by the chain. The chain’s produce manager could not be reached for comment Monday. Noell said there were very few irradiated papayas left to buy by the time the pickets arrived late Sunday afternoon.

Testing had been done Saturday at the Irvine market and another Albertson’s in Anaheim, and the overwhelming majority of shoppers who tasted the fruit served by a University of Hawaii nutritionist preferred the irradiated papaya over that which was picked earlier in the growth cycle and dipped twice in hot water to kill any larvae, Noell said.

The dispute over irradiating produce and meat is an international one, with a number of European nations, including England and West Germany, prohibiting import of foods treated with gamma rays, a procedure first developed in the 1920s. Last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ruled that extremely low doses of irradiation could be used on produce but that the produce must be clearly labeled.

Elaine Blume, a staff writer with the Center for Science in the Public Interest based in Washington, called the FDA’s ruling “disturbing.”

Blume, who wrote an article for the organization’s Nutrition Action Healthletter entitled “Food Irradiation: Is The Time Ripe?” charged that the data on which the FDA ruling was based was “not even-handed” and “less than fully satisfactory.”

Rep. Douglas Bosco (D-Occidental) has introduced a bill in Congress that would reverse the FDA’s ruling and would block its implementation, according to Kathleen Latimer, the congressman’s legislative assistant.

Bosco “has real concerns about the safety of irradiated food,” Latimer said, as well as about the safety of the process and facilities that treat the food.

‘Not Nuclear Power’

“The state of the technology is still up in the air,” Latimer said.

But Bruce Meyer, vice president of Radiation Sterilizers Inc., whose 30,000-square-foot Tustin facility processed the papayas, said the treatment was safe.

“This is not nuclear power,” he said in a telephone interview. “This is a pure gamma source in a sealed configuration.”

Meyer said the power source was Cobalt 60, which is also used to sterilize medical equipment, the facility’s primary function. There is no fissionable material used, like that required for weapons or a power plant.

Protesters charged that ultimately nuclear waste materials from power plants and weapons production would be used in irradiation.

It is possible, Meyer said, that if irradiated produce is widely accepted by the public, Cesium 137--a heretofore wasted byproduct of nuclear weapons assembly--could be substituted for Cobalt 60, which has to be manufactured.

Wallace Hall, another company vice president, said that use of Cesium 137 for irradiation “would be a benevolent use of this particular waste product.”

“Even if it were not based on scientific data,” Jerkunica said of her opposition to irradiation, “food and radioactivity do not belong together.”