BY SEAN HEALY
Opponents of food irradiation will return to the Queensland Planning and Environment Court on June 5 seeking to block an application to allow medical and biotechnology company Steritech to build a nuclear irradiation plant in Narangba, north of Brisbane.
The company claims the plant will only sterilise and decontaminate "medical, pharmaceutical, cosmetic and other products" but opponents say food irradiation is at the top of its priorities and are planning a demonstration outside the court on the day.
Suzi Tooke, a spokesperson for Concerned Citizens and the Narangba Community Progress Association, says local residents and environmentalists oppose the development not just because it's "the thin end of the wedge in the increasing nuclear industry in Australia, but also because food irradiation has raised its ugly head again".
Steritech had sought to establish Australia's first food irradiation plant at the Rocklea wholesale fruit and produce markets in Brisbane in the 1980s but public pressure forced the plan to be shelved and the federal government to ban food irradiation.
But the company began a new round of talks with the Caboolture Shire Council in January 1999, with encouragement from the state development department, which owns the subject land. The application was approved in August, the same month Australian and New Zealand health ministers relaxed the standard allowing for food to be irradiated on a case-by-case basis. Steritech had lobbied for such a change.
The then mayor of Caboolture, Tom McLoughlin, had claimed that the plant would help local growers to irradiate food for export; deputy premier and minister for state development Jim Elder has also admitted that "food is a potential use for the plant".
The plant will use highly radioactive Cobalt 60 rods to sterilise products with gamma rays. Irradiation has been proven to reduce vitamins by 20-80%, affect amino acids and polyunsaturated fats, and increase free radicals and carcinogens.
According to Tooke, "Food irradiation does not benefit consumers — only the traders and those linked to the nuclear industry".
For more information about the campaign, email <suzi_bill@hotmail.com>.