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Abstract
When Eisenhower announced the decision of his administration to promote peaceful uses of atomic science and technology on an international scale in his famous Atoms for Peace speech in front of the United Nations' General Assembly on 8 December 1953, agriculture and food were among the potential areas of application that he mentioned. Consequently, the Atoms for Peace initiative prompted national governments of many countries as well as international institutions under the aegis of the United Nations and the Organisation for European Economic Co‐Operation to establish programs for the peaceful use of atomic energy in these domains. Using ionizing radiation for the preservation of food featured as one of the most promising applications of atomic energy in all these programs. However, the paradoxically overheated Cold War expectations about the potential of nuclear technologies could not erase the fear – fueled by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – that radiation would have lethal effects when applied to human subsistence. Thus, efforts to use ionizing radiation to improve an essential human need such as food were met with distrust by its opponents. Their misgivings were actually incorporated into food legislation since it forced proponents to prove the safety of irradiated foods. To this end, food irradiation activists initiated wholesomeness studies to generate data in order to prove the safety of food, in an attempt to establish a science‐based trust regime. This paper sets out to explore how the advocates of food irradiation strove to define an internationally consistent safety concept and how this concept influenced national regulators in their task of institutionalizing trust in food.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks David Houshell, Mikael Hard, Helga Satzinger, Emanuela Scarpellini, Maria Rentetzi, Martin Collins and the History and Technology referees for their constructive feedback.
Notes
1. For more substantial deliberations on the tripartite relationship of food, technology, and trust see the introduction to this special issue. The authors who most heavily informed the concept of trust and safety that I used in this paper are Giddens, Luhmann, Beck, and Fischler (see Giddens, Konsequenzen; Luhmann, Vertrauen; Beck, ‘Reinvention of Polictics’; Fischler, ‘Food Habits’ and ‘Food Selection’).
2. For a detailed study on America's reaction to the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan, see Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light.
3. For objectivity, see Daston and Galison, Objectivity. For the connection between objectivity and trust, see Porter, Trust in Numbers, 214.
4. The first comprehensive descriptions on the process and the technology of food irradiation appeared in the early 1950s in the USA and in Great Britain. See Proctor and Goldblith, ‘Electromagnetic Radiation Fundamentals,’ 119–96 and Hannan, Scientific and Technological Problems. The first German textbook on food irradiation was Kuprianoff and Lang, Strahlenkonservierung.
5. Siu, ‘The United States Program,’ 19–26.
6. See Hacker, The Dragon's Tail. This concern and related activities survived the war since the effects of nuclear radiation on food products and packaging became a subject of exploration in nuclear test explosions. Operation Teapot conducted at the Nevada test site from February through May 1955 was one of these test series that explored radiation effects on food. See e.g. http://www.dtic.mil/srch/doc?collection=t3&id=AD0611329 (accessed 23 November 2011). (I am most thankful to Alex Wellerstein who brought these documents to my attention.) On Operation Teapot, see Hacker, Elements of Controversy, 164–9.
7. Spiller, ‘Radiant Cuisine,’ 744; Buchanan, ‘The Atomic Meal,’ 221–49.
8. Goldblith, ‘Historical Development,’ 7. See also Spiller, ‘Radiant Cuisine,’ 743.
9. Buchanan, ‘The Atomic Meal,’ 222; Spiller, ‘Radiant Cuisine,’ 745.
10. As a field for making use of the peaceful atom Eisenhower explicitly mentioned agriculture. See ‘President Eisenhower's “Atoms for Peace” Speech.’ Available from http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Deterrence/Atomsforpeace.shtml (accessed at 13 April 2010). Krige, ‘Atoms for Peace.’
11. At the conference, papers delivered on the application of nuclear radiation in food and agriculture totaled 85 (47 of US origin) and thus indicated an increasing interest in atomic food. A list of all conference papers was published in Singleton, Nuclear Radiation, 361–5.
12. Inter‐Divisional Working Party on the Uses of Atomic Energy in Agriculture. Minutes of the first meeting – 3 January 1955. 10TAC344‐162, FAO Archives.
13. In August 1958, both agencies prepared to establish a joint FAO/IAEA division in order to coordinate their nuclear work in agriculture and food. Silow to Wahlen, 4 August 1958, Relations with the IAEA, 3, 10TAC343‐1515, FAO Archives.
14. European Productivity Agency, Application of Atomic Science.
15. For information on the beginnings of national food irradiation programs in Europe, see the report of Desrosier, who was the director of the Food Radiation preservation Division at the Quartermaster Food and Container Institute for the Armed Forces in Chicago and worked as a consultant for the EPA. Desrosier, ‘Food Irradiation Research,’ 102–49. Historians of technology who dealt with the atomic euphoria of the 1950s mentioned or even investigated national food irradiation programs. See a hint in Hecht, Radiance, 151 and Josephson, Red Atom, 146–66.
16. In a 13 May 1954 report of the Federal Research Institute for Food Preservation in Karlsruhe addressed to the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Forest (FMFAF), the former mentioned plans to establish a department for radiation physics. Atomare Forschung im Bereich des Bundesministeriums für Landwirtschaft, Bonn, 13.5.1954 – III B 4 – 3809.11., B 116 – 15502, Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
17. Eckert, ‘Die Anfänge der Atompolitik,’ 115–43. Radkau, Aufstieg und Krise.
18. Bundesarchiv Koblenz, B 116, 15502, Vermerk über Besprechung am 10. November 1955 vom 15.11.1955 von Ministerialrat Dr. Trost.
19. Minister to all directors of federal research institutes and relevant university institutes from 21 March 1956. Topics of nuclear research in the fields of agricultural science, nutritional science and applied biology, B 116, 15502, Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
20. Nuclear research program of the ministry for nutrition, agriculture and forestry, Bonn 31 August 1957, B 116, 15502, Bundesarchiv Koblenz. The other topics comprised radiation genetics regarding pathological and practical effects in microorganisms, plants and animals; plant physiology and soil problems in agriculture, horticulture and forests; plant pathology and pest control; animal physiology and feeding with regard to the effects on animal products (meat, eggs, milk and fish); animal pathology including hygiene and therapy.
21. Ibid., 1. The Federal Research Institute for Agriculture in Brunswick‐Völkerrode was given responsibility for all studies on the application of atomic science in agriculture.
22. Vortrag Kuprianoffs auf der Tagung des Verbandes Deutscher Landwirtschaftlicher Untersuchungs‐ und Forschungsanstalten am 17.9.1957 in Heidelberg, B 142, Akte 490, Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
23. For the USA, see Hastings, Factors Associated with the Emergence, 184–249. Here the Department of Energy pushed for the use of caesium 137 in food irradiation until 1988, when it became clear that caesium was an unsafe source material.
24. The First Geneva Conference on the Peaceful Use of the Atom was driven by an enormous euphoria on the promise of nuclear power. Soon thereafter, though, a more restrained optimism developed. It flowered out completely at the Second Geneva Conference in 1958 when the prospects for the competitiveness of nuclear power were postponed for many years. Radkau, Aufstieg und Krise, 89–90.
25. An den Bundesminister für Finanzen Schnellbrief Bonn 30.10.1957 – on 23 May 1957 the North Atlantic Council approved the report by the Military Committee MC 48/2, 116/32398, Bundesarchiv Koblenz. The report contained measures to implement the strategic concept of a nuclear war. NATO Strategy Documents 1949–1969. ‘Final Decision on MC 48/2,’ available from http://www.nato.int/docu/stratdoc/eng/a570523b.pdf (accessed 13 April 2010).
26. For the USA, see Merrill, ‘Food Safety Regulation,’ 316–17 and Vogt, ‘Food Additive Regulation.’ For the German situation, see Stoff, ‘Hexa‐Sabbat,’ 58–60.
27. Vogt, ‘Food Additive Regulation,’ 9.
28. Merrill, ‘Food Safety Regulation,’ 317–18.
29. Stoff, ‘Hexa‐Sabbat,’ 61.
30. Ibid., 64.
31. Merrill, ‘Food Safety Regulation,’ 318.
32. Ibid.
33. Diehl, Safety of Irradiated Foods, 368.
34. Miller had spearheaded the Pesticides Amendment of 1953, which is widely known as the Miller Pesticide Amendment. See Pauli and Takeguchi, ‘Irradiation of Foods,’ 81.
35. Bill submitted by Miller cited in Pauli and Takeguchi, ‘Irradiation of Foods,’ 82.
36. Miller in Congressional Hearings on Chemical Food Additives, cited in Pauli and Takeguchi, ‘Irradiation of Foods,’ 82.
37. Weart, Nuclear Fear. Civil defense drills such as the frightening ‘Operation Alert’ that was institutionalized by the Eisenhower Administration in 1954 and performed regularly till the early 1960s in order to prepare American people for the onset of nuclear war increased the nuclear angst additionally.
38. The peaceful uses of atomic energy in relation to food and agriculture, Draft Silow, January 1955, 10TAC 344‐162, FAO Archives.
39. Cardon to Hambidge, 22 March 1955, 10TAC344‐410, FAO Archives.
40. George Larrick, in Congressional Hearings on Chemical Food Additives, cited in Pauli and Takeguchi, ‘Irradiation of Foods,’ 83.
41. Senate Report on the Food Additives Amendment of 1958, cited in Pauli and Takeguchi, ‘Irradiation of Foods,’ 85.
42. Thus, the regulators implicitly employed a concept of safety that fit with Giddens' definition of safety as a balance between trust and acceptable risk. Giddens, Konsequenzen, 51.
43. Pauli and Takeguchi, ‘Irradiation of Foods,’ 85.
44. Most insightful on trust as the moral bond of science, see Shapin, A Social History, 3–41.
45. For an overview on national regulations, see Spaander, ‘Aspects of Legislation.’
46. Vogt, ‘Food Additive Regulation,’ 9.
47. Magendie, ‘Über die nährenden Eigenschaften der stickstofflosen Substanzen.’
48. Giddings, ‘Food Irradiation,’ 111. Kraybill, ‘Statement,’ 41. Feeding tests with irradiated foods dates back to at least the 1920s when scientists within their investigations of radioactivity tried to explore the effects of radiation on foods.
49. Ibid., 44–6.
50. See Kuprianoff and Lang, Strahlenkonservierung, 176–8. They mentioned 10–16 test persons.
51. Kraybill, ‘Statement,’ 41.
52. Ibid., 41–2.
53. At a ‘Symposium on Processing of Food with Ionizing Radiation’ that was organized by British researchers from the Low Temperature Research Station in Cambridge, 26–27 September 1957, the American participants reported that about 300 research workers were engaged in 50–60 contracts with university research institutes and commercial companies. Note on the Symposium, N.E. Holmes, 10TAC344.222, FAO Archives.
54. Spiller, ‘Radiant Cuisine,’ 746.
55. Kuprianoff, ‘Die Möglichkeiten,’ 296.
56. Meins, Politics and Public Outrage, 68.
57. Ibid.
58. Spiller, ‘Radiant Cuisine,’ 747.
59. Ibid.
60. Pauli and Takeguchi, ‘Irradiation of Foods,’ 89.
61. Kuprianoff and Lang, Strahlenkonservierung, 184.
62. Correspondence Eichholtz – Kuprianoff, draft dated 30 June 1954, folder 28102, signature 11, Archives of the University of Karlsruhe.
63. The Steering Committee for Nuclear Energy of the OEEC set up a study group on food irradiation in January 1960. NE/IR (60)1 18.2.1960, NUC 1095, Historical Archives of the European Union, Florence. Within its biological program EURATOM also cosponsored nationally conducted projects in food irradiation. See Das Biologieprogramm von Euratom 1961–1964 – Bericht und Ausblick von R.K. Appleyard, 41–43, B 116, Folder 15503, Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
64. Giddings, ‘Food Irradiation,’ 114.
65. Comptroller General of the United States, Department of the Army's Food, i.
66. On the concept of experimental systems and their development in the realm of genetics and biological radiation research, see Rheinberger and Müller‐Wille, Vererbung, 220.
67. Diehl, Safety of Irradiated Foods, 283.
68. Report of the Meeting on the Wholesomeness of Irradiated Foods, Brussels, October 1961, FAO, Rome 1962.
69. Ibid.
70. Silow to Boerma at 24 July 1961, 10TAC344‐138, FAO Archives.
71. An extensive description on how this conflict escalated in the 1960s was published recently. See Hamblin, Let There Be Light.
72. ‘The Technical Basis for Legislation on Irradiated Food,’ Report of a Joint FAO/IAEA/WHO Expert Committee, Rome, 21–28 April 1964, FAO and WHO, Rome, 1965.
73. From West Germany Johan Kuprianoff and Konrad Lang served as members of the committee. The USA had a representative from the FDA, a scientific director from the American Meat Institute Foundation and a member of the Continental Can Company dispatched to the committee. Ibid., ix–x.
74. The experts came from England, West Germany, the USA, Czechoslovakia, France, Canada, Chile, the Netherlands, and India.
75. ‘The Technical Basis,’ 36 (see note 72 above).
76. Ibid., 14.
77. Ibid., 15.
78. Ibid., 16–25. At the same time the JECFI wanted the individual investigator to determine the actual details of experimental design.
79. Spaander, ‘Some International Aspects,’ 208.
80. ‘Wholesomeness of Irradiated Food with Special Reference to Wheat, Potatoes and Onions,’ Report of a Joint FAO/IAEA/WHO Expert Committee, Geneva, 8–12 April 1969, WHO, Geneva, 1970, 12, 15.
81. Pauli and Takeguchi, ‘Irradiation of Foods,’ 93.
82. Luhmann, Vertrauen.
83. Giddings, ‘Food Irradiation,’ 118
84. Spiller, ‘Radiant Cuisine,’ 748f.
85. United States General Accounting Office, ‘The Department of the Army's Food Irradiation Program – Is It Worth Continuing?’ Report by the Comptroller General of the United States, Washington DC, Citation1978, 6.
86. Silow, R., ‘FAO Position Paper on Food Irradiation on the International Level,’ November 1968, 10 ADG 351, FAO Archives, Rome.
87. Hamblin explored Silow's position in the Joint Division in more detail. Hamblin, ‘Let There Be Light.’
88. Lévèque, ‘Editorial,’ 1.
89. Here a case study on fruit and fruit juices was conducted as a first international research project in the field with several OECD countries participating, especially West Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, and the USA from 1965 to 1968. Austrian researchers at the Austrian Nuclear Research Centre at Seibersdorf initiated the project. They invited interested parties from other countries to participate and in September 1964 an agreement was signed between the Institute of Biology and Agriculture of the Austrian Studiengesellschaft für Atomenergie at the Seibersdorf centre, the IAEA, which was running their own laboratory in Seibersdorf, and the European Nuclear Energy Agency (ENEA) as the institutional home of the European study group on food irradiation. On the early beginnings of the Seibersdorf project see Historical Archives of the European Union, NUC 1095, NE/IR(62)1, Paris 10.4.1962.
90. Lévèque, ‘Editorial,’ 1.
91. Wiesner, ‘Kommt der Lebensmittelbestrahlung noch.’
92. Karlsruhe made its guest center available for participants free of charge. Participants' salaries were paid by the IAEA, and the ENEA provided secretarial services for the committees of the International Project. First Activity Report – International Project in the field of Food Irradiation, Karlsruhe, 1971, B 189, Folder 17568, 11–12, BA Koblenz.
93. Ibid., 4.
94. Regarding the transformation of nuclear radiation research to environemental hygiene, see Schwerin, ‘Der gefährdete Organismus,’ 87–214.
95. In the Federal Republic of Germany a booklet with the title Incalculable Health Hazards Caused by Food Irradiation, authored by a radiologist and published by the Waerland‐movement, a health and nutrition reform movement, in 1967 caught a lot of attention. It inspired the International Society for Research on Nutrition and Vital Substances to announce its 13th International Convention on Vital Substances, Nutrition, and Civilisation Diseases in Trier, Germany in September 1967 under the subject ‘The Dangers of Nuclear Irradiation.’ The Convention intended to pass a resolution condemning food irradiation. (See United States Government Memorandum, 7 December 1967, B 189/17570, Bundesarchives Koblenz, and Herbst, Unübersehbare Gesundheitsrisiken.)
The Society on Vital Substances rested on a conservative approach towards environmentalism and provided a forum for many old Nazis. In contrast, the anti‐nuclear movement of the 1970s voiced its critique against the nuclear culture from a radical civil movement's standpoint. The latter prepared the new wave of resistance against food irradiation of the 1980s. On consumer resistance in the 1980s, see Kursawa‐Stucke, Strahlenkonservierung, and Diehl, Safety of Irradiated Foods, 387–94. On the Society in Vital Substances, see Melzer, Vollwerternährung, 305–19.
96. Seaborg was cited in Food Irradiation Information, no. 2 (September 1973): 19. This journal appeared once a year from 1972 to 1982. It was the official publication of IFIP.
97. United States General Accounting Office, ‘The Department of the Army's Food,’ 7 (see note 85).
98. Ibid. 6.
99. The director of the Federal Research Center for Food Preservation in Karlsruhe that also coordinated the IFIP, served on the committee in all years of its existence. After Kuprianoff had left office in 1969, his successor Johannes Diehl followed him also as a committee member.
100. ‘Wholesomeness of Irradiated Food,’ Report of a Joint FAO/IAEA/WHO Expert Committee, Geneva, 31 August – 7 September 1976, WHO, Geneva, 1977, 29–39.
101. Ibid., 8–9.
102. Ibid., 9.
103. Ibid., 9.
104. But how can we understand this shift of attention? For Germany Alexander von Schwerin argues that the 1960s saw a chemicalization of radiation research leading to a transformation of radiation protection into a broader conceptionalized environmental hygiene. In 1969 the German research Council opened a ‘Zentrallabor für Mutagenitätsforschung’ (Central Laboratory of Mutagenicity Research) in Freiburg i.Br. See Von Schwerin, ‘Staatsnah und grundlagenorientiert,’ 15–16.
105. ‘News,’ in Food Irradiation Information, no. 3 (June 1974): 27.
106. Ibid., 25.
107. Ibid., in no. 7, April 1977, 56.
108. ‘Wholesomeness of Irradiated Food,’ Report of a Joint FAO/IAEA/WHO Expert Committee, Geneva, 31 August–7 September 1976, WHO, Geneva, 1977, 10.
109. ‘Wholesomeness of Irradiated Food,’ Report of a Joint FAO/IAEA/WHO Expert Committee, Geneva, 27 October–3 November 1980, WHO, Geneva, 1981, 31.
110. Diehl, Safety of Irradiated Foods, 288.
111. Ibid., 339–53.
112. Leemhorst, ‘Role of Radiation Industry,’ cited in Taylor, ‘Consumer Views,’ 129.
113. Ehlermann, ‘Zur Geschichte,’ 8.
114. Chemiclearance implied the estimation of radiolytic products as a basis for evaluating the wholesomeness of irradiated foods and for extrapolating wholesomeness data from one irradiated food to another. See Diehl, Safety of Irradiated Foods, 186.