Firm Pushes Irradiation of Red Meat : Food: New Jersey company plans to ask U.S. approval of cobalt-60 treatment to kill bacteria in beef. Agriculture secretary supports test.

WASHINGTON — A New Jersey company that uses gamma rays to sterilize everything from baby bottles to hip-joint replacements wants to use its cobalt-60 on germs that cause hamburgers to spoil and sicken people.

Isomedix Inc. of Whippany, N.J., plans to ask the Food and Drug Administration to approve irradiation as a way to kill bacteria and other microorganisms on beef.

If the petition is filed in the next few weeks, as expected, the agency could approve irradiation of red meat by the end of the year. But don’t expect zapped patties to show up suddenly at the meat counter or hamburger drive-through.

The Agriculture Department would first have to issue guidelines, which would happen next spring at the earliest. Then someone in the meat industry has to gamble that the public will buy irradiated meat.

The poultry industry has rejected the process for chickens and turkeys, despite FDA approval in 1990. Only a plant in Florida irradiates birds for a limited market.

This time around, however, the red meat industry supports the process. A food poisoning outbreak last year traced to undercooked hamburgers renewed the interest. And Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy has given it enough lip service to encourage industry.

“We haven’t until now detected the industry need the way we do now,” said John Masefield, a founder of Isomedix, a 22-year-old publicly traded company that is this country’s largest operator of industrial irradiators.

Safe-handling labels that will soon be required will let consumers “make an informed choice between the concepts of ‘handle with care’ or irradiated to ensure that the product is safer,” Masefield noted in the company’s 1993 annual report.

Isomedix has nine plants in this country and one in Canada, but the company will limit its food irradiation to trial runs and market testing.

Although irradiation has been touted for killing harmful bacteria, yeasts and molds, it also kills microorganisms that cause meat to spoil, which is another reason Isomedix has become involved.

Packing companies and labor-saving supermarkets can profit from having more retail cuts prepared at the plant rather than in the store.

The Isomedix effort comes at an interesting time in the debate about meat safety.

Last year, Espy was making enough pro-irradiation comments to make the industry believe he would give it a try. But the meat industry and the Agriculture Department can’t be seen as too cozy without Espy’s alienating consumer groups he has been trying to appease.

Nearly everything Espy says about food safety generates a press release. But there was none when he sent a letter March 1 to Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala asking her and her agency, the FDA, to act quickly on the red meat petition.

The department is giving research data in support of the petition, Espy noted, calling irradiation a “potentially useful tool” among others the department is encouraging to improve food safety.

“While I am not in a position to comment on the merits of the petition, I do ask that you support its prompt review,” he said. “We can do no less to protect the health of the American public.”

The semi-distancing helped Espy last week, when at a hunger forum in Burlington, Vt., he faced questions from opponents of irradiation.

Espy was able to answer that the department was just asking the FDA to take a look at the process, calling it “an option that should be explored,” and stressing his concern with consumer acceptance and worker safety.