“Food irradiation is essentially a nuclear waste disposal plan,” states Dennis Mosgofian, Director of the National Coalition to Stop Food Irradiation in San Francisco. Food irradiation is intimately connected to nuclear weapons production. Cesium-137, the most common radioactive material for food irradiation, is a byproduct of the process used to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. If a food irradiation industry is established, Mosgofian says, “It would produce a world-wide demand for cesium-137, which would substantially reduce the waste management problem that the Department of Energy has, and in turn allow the arms race to continue unabated.”
