Irradiated Food Sounds Like a Terrible Thing. It’s Actually Really Good.
In 2002, the East Coast supermarket chain Wegmans introduced a line of packaged ground beef that had been irradiated with an electron beam to kill bacteria. Company executives expected the product to do well; a series of food-borne illness outbreaks had rendered Americans’ confidence in food safety dismally low. The launch came at the start of grilling season, and executives thought it would be a hit with people who liked their burgers rare but didn’t want to get sick from undercooked meat. The slogan: “Cook it the way you like it!”
“Some people even think their food is going to be radioactive, which is just totally not how this works.”
But to their surprise, sales were unimpressive—and they remain so today, says Wegmans’ meat merchandising manager, Mark Spagnola. One reason might be the higher price: Irradiated beef can cost as much as 80 cents more per pound. But Wegmans’ customers are willing to pay a premium for other special foods, like organics. So more likely, it’s irradiation itself that puts shoppers off. Many consumer surveys have found that people consider irradiation—which the federal government approved for some foods as early as the 1960s—creepy and unsafe. “Some people even think their food is going to be radioactive,” Spagnola says, “which is just totally not how this works.”
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