Bryan i have to guess you weren't reading the 'social justice and raw foods' thread? Please move it back as the posts were relevant. People are going to get upset by the talk that has to happen if we are going to protect our access to raw foods but the conversation is still on topic.

Apologies to the non-US folks for the following content, which is specific to US law, although with the coming of Codex these things could be universalised. Apparently many non-US countries also have started permitting -- or requiring -- irradiation of several staple and daily-use foods.

So the FDA is proposing a rule to allow irradiated foods to be labeled as pasteurised:
[news.yahoo.com]
In the article it says, "Examples currently radiated include a small number of fruits, vegetables, spices and eggs." Like Suvine said, about the spices.

Apparently they don't have to label the following things as irradiated either:
packaged sprouts, fruits in the salad bar, herbal teas, basically anything anyone serves you.

The excerpt below also states there's no enforcement of irradiation labeling laws:

What kind of labeling is currently required

All irradiated foods must be labeled using the radura and some wording, but only to the FIRST PURCHASER, who is often NOT the consumer.

Consumer text labels are required for:

* Plant foods sold in their whole form in a package (e.g., a bag of wheat flour or oranges).
* Fresh whole fruits and vegetables.
* Whole meat and poultry in a package (like chicken breasts).
* Unpackaged meat and poultry (like from a butcher).
* Irradiated meat and poultry that are part of another packaged food (like irradiated chicken in chicken stew).
* That's all!

Consumer text labels for FDA-regulated and USDA-regulated foods are NOT required for:

* Irradiated ingredients in foods prepared or served by restaurants, salad bars, hotels, airlines, hospitals, schools, nursing homes, etc.
* Irradiated foods prepared by delis or supermarket take-out counters.
* Spices and herb teas
* Sprouts grown from irradiated seeds
* Ingredients in supplements
* Plant-food ingredients that are processed again (like apples in applesauce or papaya in a salad-bar salad).

When consumer text labels are required, the FDA requirements are:

* There must be wording, either "treated with radiation" or "treated by irradiation".
* For packaged foods, the wording does not need to be bigger than the smallest type on the ingredient label, or in any special colors or typeface.
* For bulk fruits or vegetables, the words must appear on a card or display (or on each piece of food), but no size is specified and there is no enforcement.

-- from [www.purefood.org]

There is also a nice article at organic consumers which links back to the living foods site: [www.organicconsumers.org]

What fruits at the supermarket are likely to be irradiated???

Honestly, the whole thing is very sketchy.

Basically no one will own up to it. I read papayas, mangos, starfruit, lychee. the regulations say supposedly whole fruit (that doesn't count whole fruit that gets cut up or juiced or canned) has to be labeled, but the hawaii newspapers say that most of the fruit grown on the big island is irradiated.

probably we would need to get in touch with people who work in different parts of the growing and shipping process, the 'handlers' i guess, or people who work for them

It turns out the radura symbol doesn't look anything like the radioactive symbol, it's pretty, like it would look normal in the produce section:

crowd Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Bryan i have to guess you weren't reading the
> 'social justice and raw foods' thread? Please move
> it back as the posts were relevant.

I agree. Surely there is no real reason to keep moving threads. I mean if it is completly off topic then fair enough, but it seems some important threads are being moved and some frivolous ones are being left.

Rob

--
Rob Hull - Funky Raw
My blog: [www.rawrob.com]

i used to moderate a gaming forum so i know what a pain in the butt it can be

that said

perhaps we can come to a small compromise ..?

could we maybe just leave the topic on the main forum if its been discussed untill it at least drops to the bottom? not so many people seem to read the other forums quite so much as this main one.

i know its hard to please everyone all the time and trying can be futile lol

Mangos coming in from other countries are often pasteurized. Look for dark streaks in them, and I think they're the mangos that look squishy and light yellow. When they're dehydrated they aren't worth eating-- they have black and brown streaks and they're hard and have a distinctly cooked taste that's kind of nauseating. This is very disheartening.

I was talking just tonight to a really nice guy who manages a department at my local co-op, who finally is on board with the understanding that Codex is coming to this country, and he had some good insights. He feels that we're going to have to get back to local agriculture and eat local organic food that isn't pasteurized or irradiated. In my locale that means apples, cranberries, greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchinni-- stuff that's good for me in this particular temperate climate. Maybe we'll be healthier if we don't eat all those exotic imported things.

THose of you who live in the southern and some of the western states will have a little more latitude-- citrus and tropical fruits. We can survive and probably even enjoy ourselves. In the meantime, we will work to change this.

Sharrhan:


[www.facebook.com]

Has anyone seen "Soylent Green"? It's about all the fresh food in the world being a thing of history, and the world being over populated and the the "Soylent Green" is actually deceased people they were eating. I think that is something that could actually really happen, if we let the government push us that way.

haaacccck no

or else i'll push those gubernatorial folks into the soylent green to be eaten by the cooked cookie monstahs :<

A large part of the problem is transnationalism/globalism/NAFTA/WTO and the enormous power of the cororations. (See the documentary 'The Corporation' for more info on the rise of the power of the corporations in the past couple decades.) It's all about trade. The corporations are really running things now, and the people in government-- our congressmen/women, executive dept., etc.-- are in their hip pocket, doing their bidding. The pharmaceutical companies are major, major players in this travesty, and they throw so much money at politicians that they have total leverage over them and always get their way.

There is one thing we have in our favor, however: when enough people hop up and down and make a fuss about this stuff, both FDA and government get nervous and back down. Protest, sign petitions, write letters to your politicians, educate your friends, etc., because it does truly make a difference.

Sharrhan:


[www.facebook.com]

this really worries me alot, it worries me especially cause I live in a colder place where produce isn't grown in the winter the bulk of our produce in the winter is imported from the US so well if CODEX makes it so the food they send us gets irradiated before it hits the grocery stores and markets then there will really be no way to keep rawfoodist here!!!

Please someone tell me its not that bad that they won't really do that to our produce. Won't people find it tastes different and complain too? I mean just regular people even not just only the health concious or alternative health type people.

Alot of people often say we should listen to our bodies. Sometimes some foods have different effects then others papaya's have really magical effects that just aren't found in an apple you know. Some people can't grow some things that may really be specifically good for their systems and their problems.

For thousands of years people have traded foods of course years ago they did it in a way better echo friendly way(boats and wagons and stuff) than now, still people living in colder climates really need foods from warmer places to survive on a raw diet if they make it so all those foods have to be irradiated it will be the end of rawfood diet and lifestyle for many people. Please people in cold climate depend on trade for rawfoods otherwise its cooked and processed for us we need foods that have nothing done to them to have any chance to have decent health



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/13/2007 05:19PM by singinraw.

without globalism and nationalism people living in the northern countries can pretty well enjoy their snow shovels and cooked foods and hunting and whatever and forget healthy lifestyles cause for some of us to live a real healthy lifestyle and fresh food is out of reach cause we don't have options to go where we wish.

Nafta makes it alot easier for some of us to have access to warmer climate things and warmer climates

>Please someone tell me its not that bad that they won't really do that to our produce. Won't people find it tastes different and complain too? I mean just regular people even not just only the health concious or alternative health type people.<

Singinraw,
I totally empathize-- it's extremely disheartening. But the truth is that this IS really what's on the table, and our best recourse is to look it squarely in the face and do everything we can to redirect it in a more positive direction. In Europe Codex is already the law in a lot of countries, making many of the alternatives people took for granted a few years ago completely off limits. It's outrageous. . . but that's the direction globalization has gone.

>without globalism and nationalism people living in the northern countries can pretty well enjoy their snow shovels and cooked foods and hunting and whatever and forget healthy lifestyles cause for some of us to live a real healthy lifestyle and fresh food is out of reach cause we don't have options to go where we wish.<

Globalization and transnationalism are great concepts-- they were supposed to be, anyway. However what was not anticipated was the way the huge corporate forces would co-opt the whole thing and make it all about the bottom line, not about making life better for people. Tragic.

i see in no way how globalization could be good, ive always thought, always that there would be some hidden force behind it, u kno like a fake smile,, it just creeps me out the whole thing, its a good idea, but the people who are behind it are corrupt, and it dosent look like they want 2 do anything good for the world

Hey Kwan, that is nice, but I live in Miami where tropical fruit is what we eat!

>Hey Kwan, that is nice, but I live in Miami where tropical fruit is what we eat!<

Suvine-- Just saw your post, and I'd like to respond, but I'm not sure what you were referring to in my message. (What's nice? Did I say something nice? :-p)Sometimes I wish I lived in Miamii too-- I bet you get wonderful local fruit that's really fresh.

Sharrhan:


[www.facebook.com]

Yes but only in summer. it's crazy crazy in summer, all at one time, boom and all the fruit is everywhere, Lychees, mangos, oh boy we have mango festivals. We really do. and papayas grow all the time and so do coconuts. if you ever visit in summer we will go to fruit and spice park and eat fruit, they have rare fruit there, jaboticabas, oh orginal bananas, oh my so much