Eric Ripert, the chef of Le Bernardin, the high temple of seafood in Manhattan, bought a new kitchen gadget a few days ago: a radiation detector.
“I just want to make sure whatever we use is safe,” said Ripert, whose staff is using the device to screen every item of food that enters the restaurant, regardless of its origin. He has also stopped buying fish from Japan, which means no high-quality, farm-raised hamachi and kampachi for raw seafood dishes. “Nobody knows how the currents will carry the contaminated water,” he said.
Despite assurances by health officials that radiation from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan is unlikely to show up in the food supply, worries about contaminated foods are growing among consumers, businesses and governments.
On Tuesday, the Japanese government announced new radiation standards for fish after high levels of radioactive iodine and cesium were found in fish caught halfway between the reactor site and Tokyo. In response, the European Union said it would tighten its own radiation limits for Japanese food imports. India said it would ban all food from Japan for at least three months.
In the United States, where about 4 per cent of food imports come from Japan, the Food and Drug Administration has restricted some foods from the country. And the agency is working with customs officials to screen incoming fish and other food for radiation traces.
So far, that screening has identified seven items that required further testing to see if the radiation detected exceeded normal background levels, according to Siobhan Delancey, an FDA spokeswoman. Those items included tea and flavoring compounds. She said three items had been cleared for delivery and four were awaiting test results.
Patricia A Hansen, a senior scientist at the FDA, acknowledged the radiation detection methods used to screen food imports were not sensitive enough to detect a single contaminated fish in a large shipment. But she said small amounts of contamination did not represent a public health hazard. A person would have to consume large amounts of fish in excess of what are known as an “intervention level” of radiation for an extended time period for it to be considered dangerous.
“One fish that might be at an intervention level in a huge cargo container, we’re not going to pick that up,” she said. “But the important context is, is that one fish at the intervention level a public health concern? No, it is not.”
Nicholas Fisher, a professor of marine sciences at the State University of New York, said according to some radiation safety guidelines, people could safely eat 35 pounds of fish each year containing the level of cesium 137 detected in the Japanese fish. “You’re not going to die from eating it right away,” he said, “but we’re getting to levels where I would think twice about eating it.” All the talk about radioactive food in Japan, which earlier banned milk and other farm products from areas near the crippled plant, has made some people uneasy, even thousands of miles away. “When radioactive material started going into the ocean, that raised my concern greatly,” Karen Werner said as she shopped for fish at 99 Ranch Market in Richmond, Calif.
Other segments of the food industry are also grappling with how to respond to radiation concerns. Tests and Monitoring devices have detected traces of radioactive material from Japan in the air and water in many states.
