Irradiation -- blasting food with gamma rays -- may sound unpalatable, but it's considered safe by about 40 nations and a long list of professional associations. (Some of the best evidence comes from studies that found no effects in many generations of rodents that ate solely irradiated food.) And irradiation is already legal -- although seldom used -- for fruits, vegetables, poultry and pork in the United States.

Undoubtedly, irradiation can kill viruses, bacteria, fungi and insects, which explains its widespread use in sterilizing medical equipment, astronaut food and baby bottles. But if irradiation is opening many mouths these days, we bet the cause is a yawn of boredom, not a spasm of appetite.

Still, after two highly publicized episodes of food poisoning, the meat and irradiation industries are cautiously optimistic that the FDA's decision will allow a technology, in the wings for 40 years, to finally sterilize buffalo wings and chicken gizzards. According to J. Patrick Boyle, president of the American Meat Institute, "While U.S. consumers have not had many irradiated food choices in the marketplace, perhaps this new FDA approval will spark consumer interest in -- and possibly demand for -- some irradiated food products."

And yet IBP, Inc., the nation's largest beef producer, is hardly gung-ho. Company spokesman Gary Mickelson told The New York Times that irradiation darkened meat and changed its flavor in a way that was "noticeable enough" to cause concerns (see "Long Quest for Safer Food" in the bibliography).

So what's the big advantage?
The FDA decision was in response to a petition from Isomedix, an irradiation firm that sterilizes mainly medical devices and packaging. But the sudden prominence of food irradiation, which has been around for more than 30 years, really reflects the rise of a nasty variant of the common (and usually harmless) intestinal bacterium Escherichia coli.

The new super-bug, E. coli O157:H7, is a dastardly organism that, in the FDA's words, causes "hemorrhagic colitis, a severe illness, the symptoms of which include high fever, vomiting, and bloody diarrhea, with consequent dehydration. In patients with weakened or immature immune systems, the infection can progress to...a life-threatening kidney disease with a mortality rate of 6 percent." (A four-hour test for this bug has just been reported. See "'Dipstick' Test for E. coli, " in the bibliography.)

The sick-food alarm began ringing after O157:H7 killed three customers of a Jack-in-the-Box restaurant in 1993. Last August, the organism caused a 25-million-pound recall of hamburger meat from a Hudson Foods, Inc., plant in Nebraska. Although this variant is being found in fewer food samples each year, the FDA says it still causes more than 20,000 infections and 250 deaths each year in the United States.

E. coli is not the only problem. The bad food bacteria, which also include salmonella, campylobacter and shigella, cause between 6.5 and 33 million cases of foodborne illnesses -- and about 9,000 deaths -- annually in the United States, according to the American Dietetic Association. In most cases, the problem can be traced to meat, which provides a great home for bacteria. (Feeling obsessed by bacteria? The Why Files covered antibiotic resistant microbes.)