We go to great lengths to ensure a safe food supply, like processors washing chicken in bleach, washing eggs and massive doses of antibiotics. Despite these efforts, outbreaks are not uncommon. Even vegetables like bean sprouts and onions are commonly associated with outbreaks.
Made me wonder, why don't we just blast food with a short burst of radiation before/after packing?
Or if it is used, why isn't it more common?
There are some concerns about radiochemical effects, mostly regarding nutritional degradation, with extremely high doses such as might be used to sterilize raw meat for storage at room temperature.
While I can't source this now that I'm looking for it, I vaguely recall reading a survey about food irradiation acceptance; about half the respondents thought that irradiating food made it radioactive. There's much public apprehension, and confusion, with anything involving the word radation.
Similarly with public acceptance, one of the biggest reasons to use it would be to reduce the need for refrigeration. But consumer preference and familiarity makes it difficult to accept things like dairy that isn't refrigerated. UHT milk is available in my country but almost unknown. Even the UHT milk is sold refrigerated! I've suggested it to others before, such as for lack of refrigeration when camping. The reaction was ew, is that safe? Doesn't it need to be refrigerated? Hard to overcome that.
And of course eggs are their own special story. They already come with a protective coating. The US and Canada just washes it off, actually making the eggs _less_ safe, necessitating refrigeration.
As for why it's not happening today, with all the news about that one little vial of cesium that's gone missing lately... I can't imagine a nuclear regulatory agency being comfortable with letting every single farm receive shipments of radioactive material.
Not until we have some sort of GPS+Satcom method of tracking these vials point-to-point.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation - "As for transportation of the radiation source, cobalt-60 is transported in special trucks that prevent release of radiation and meet standards mentioned in the Regulations for Safe Transport of Radioactive Materials of the International Atomic Energy Act."
I would imagine is difficult to avoid irradiating other things while in the process of irradiating food, also NIMBY probably? I don't think the FDA is trustworthy enough for everyone, so even if they say that it's safe, I think many people would prefer non-irradiated food, to the point of it not being worth it for companies to irradiate it
That's very much a US-only thing; in many (most?) other countries there are regulations about raising livestock that make this unnecessary and even (like the antibiotics) illegal.
Food workers will manipulate thousands of Kg of food each month. Even small doses of radiation from each one those packages would accumulate over time in this people, reaching a safety threshold. Radiation would be a logistic nightmare for the packaging company, requiring extensive periods of forced "holidays", healthcare checks and stopping the chain.
Plus the terrible publicity