Except how many companies have tested for this and can assure that it is within normal limits.
Yes, but again how many are testing for this and this would not be cheap and this would not be a procedure done at most labs. I don't know about you but food is pricey enough without adding additional costs that may not be value added.
Note to self: Open new count lab, could be big bucks..
The EPA, the USDA and the FDA monitor radiation levels the best that I can ascertain. The EPA monitors the levels in precipitation, drinking water and air. The FDA monitors imported food. I think that the USDA monitors meat and dairy products. Between all of them, the data has been gathered for how much radiation is usually around in regions of the country or world and how much is being found in food products. We don't have to monitor for it ourselves.
But...getting to that data is not super easy nor is it easy to interpret. But I think it is not insurmountable. So here are some ways I see to perform the risk assessment:
- The FDA would block any food that is being imported that is unsafe (remember, all imported cargo is tested for radioactivity as part of our Homeland Security initiative), if your raw materials are imported. So there is a low risk there for imported food materials, since the FDA will be doing the testing.
- For raw materials from domestic sources, you may need to check the EPA data on the location where the material is produced to see if there are elevated environmental radiation levels. The environment will be the source of the contamination of the material. If the area is not considered to be a high radiation area, then your risk assessment could state that the risk is low because of EPA monitoring. You may want to check each year to see if the levels have changed, but I think that the EPA would be placing bans on food production in contaminated areas.
- If you are irradiating your own products as a microbiological control measure, that could be a real source of risk due to the presence of radioactive materials on site, and you would need to consider how to control the possibility of contamination due to a breaking of the sealed source. For that you would need to have a protocol in place.
People in the US are terrified of radiation, so there have been a lot of controls put in place for that risk.
Setting up a rad lab is expensive, but not prohibitively so. I would use liquid scintillation counting of samples. I seem to remember that a new counter costs about $60,000 and you would need someone to prep the samples and run the counts. That is a lot of money, but it's not a huge price tag if you have paid for something to irradiate your products which is more expensive. The only time I would consider it to be necessary would be if you are irradiating your product on site, and you then would be doing a monitoring program anyway.
I really think that the risk assessment is easy unless you are irradiating your product, and then it is still pretty straightforward. But that's my $0.02.
Martha
"...everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." Viktor E. Frankl
"Life's like a movie, write your own ending." The Muppets