Irradiated Fruit Due in Florida Stores Later This Year : Food safety: Backers of the process say produce will be bug-free and delicious. Critics, labeling it dangerous, are running radio ads in opposition.

Strawberries, Florida’s earliest winter vegetable crop, are likely to be the first irradiated food to show up on grocery shelves later this year. Next will come grapefruit, oranges and tomatoes.

And Sam Whitney, who runs the first plant in the United States designed expressly to zap foods with a heavy dose of gamma rays, says consumers will find the produce bug-free and delicious.

But the prospect of bombarding fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as poultry, with radiation as the foodstuffs pass through a lead-lined chamber with walls six feet thick, already has touched off a nationwide food fight over both the safety and ethics of the process.

For states such as Florida and California, where agriculture is a multibillion-dollar industry, the stakes are enormous.

The Florida Department of Citrus has endorsed irradiation as a safe alternative to the now-banned ethylene dibromide as a way to kill the Caribbean fruit fly, and Whitney says he has clients lining up for his service, albeit quietly.

Dan L. Gunter, executive director of the agency that oversees the state’s $8-billion annual citrus crop, said he has not heard of plans by any producer to use irradiation. But, he added: “We don’t question its safety. Certainly it has a role to play if the public accepts it.”

Critics claim that irradiating foods is dangerous.

“Consumers must understand that carcinogens are created when foods are exposed to high levels of radiation, and, as a result, radiation-exposed foods can cause cancer,” says Walter Burnstein, a physician in Blairstown, N.J., who heads a public interest group called Food & Water Inc.

Food & Water has launched an attack on irradiation with a $300,000 publicity campaign and a threat to mount a global boycott of all Florida agriculture once irradiated produce goes on sale.

“What if you found out those fresh fruits and vegetables everyone keeps telling you to eat more of might . . . kill you?” asks a radio spot that has been airing in Florida. The 60-second message goes on to raise the specter of genetic damage, cancer and birth defects.

Whitney, whose company, Vindicator Inc., built the $7-million plant in Mulberry, 30 miles east of Tampa, says opponents repeat “proven lies” about the dangers of irradiation.

Florida Agriculture Commissioner Bob Crawford also has lashed back at Food & Water, characterizing their charges as “the worst kind of scare tactic. It encourages the public to be afraid of something they don’t know much about.”

Precisely, says Food & Water director Michael Colby. “We don’t know enough about it, and we don’t believe the Food and Drug Administration should conduct its experiments on the American dinner table,” he says. “Americans should not be guinea pigs for a toxic technology.”

The FDA first began to approve radiation in 1963. The U.S. Agriculture Department, the World Health Organization and the governments of dozens of other nations also have approved its use on various foods.

Some market trials with irradiated foods have been conducted. In 1987, irradiated Hawaiian papayas were sold in two Los Angeles supermarkets. The year before, Miami shoppers bought irradiated mangoes from Puerto Rico. Astronauts have eaten irradiated food.

Now that Whitney, a 67-year-old who made millions of dollars trucking phosphate from Florida mines, has built the nation’s first commercial food irradiation plant, consumers will be the final judge.

The FDA requires all radiation-exposed food to be labeled, using a stylized flower symbol, so that consumers know what they are getting.

Food & Water has plans to picket the first markets that sell irradiated food. “For a short period you may see it in stores,” Colby says. “But I don’t think it will last. Vindicator will sink, and (Whitney) will jump. I can’t imagine that facility being open in the spring of 1992.”

Whitney vows the plant will not only remain in operation, but asserts that he and his investors will be well on the way to a $2.4-million first-year gross.

Whitney won’t name his clients, saying he fears they would be harassed by irradiation opponents. But he says he not only has vegetable and fruit producers as clients, but also poultry producers concerned about salmonella. “Chicken is the big item,” he said. “Poultry people are desperate to use our service.”

Asked if he expected consumers to balk at buying chicken that has been exposed to 300,000 rads of radiation--a dosage, approved by the FDA, which is equal to 30 million chest X-rays--Whitney replied:

“Of course there’ll be some customer resistance. I know people who don’t buy frozen foods. I know people who won’t go to the doctor. A few years ago people were afraid of microwave ovens, and now they’re more common than bathrooms. It’s a choice of having safe foods or foods that are dangerous.”

Colby says Whitney’s claims to have several client contracts are suspect. Food & Water has collected statements from the 13 largest U.S. poultry producers, including Perdue Farms, ConAgra and Gold Kist, in which they promise not to use radiation.

According to a spokesman for the National Broiler Council, which represents 95% of all chicken producers: “Irradiation does not do anything (to kill bacteria) that normal cooking doesn’t do. There does not seem to be any great interest in the broiler industry.”

Zapping foods with radiation from either cobalt-60 or cesium-137 does not make foods radioactive or cause its consumers to glow in the dark. But radiation does scramble the bonds between molecules and creates leftover substances called radiolytic products.

Food & Water claims that radiation reduces natural nutrient values, encourages the mutation of microorganisms and kills bacteria that signal spoilage. The radiolytic residue may also cause cancer, the group says.

But Joseph M. Ahrens, a crop physiologist at UC Davis, says he sees no reason to believe that the cell changes in fruits and vegetables are harmful. “It’s safe,” says Ahrens. “I have eaten irradiated citrus, and I would easily serve it to my four children.”

In some 40 facilities across the United States, radiation is widely used to sterilize medical supplies--gloves, syringes and hospital gowns, for example. Some, such as Radiation Sterilizers Inc., at its Tustin, Calif., plant, irradiate spices that are used in processed foods.

Noel F. Sommer, a plant pathologist at UC Davis who spent years studying irradiation as a means of controlling fruit flies, says he has probably eaten more gamma-rayed strawberries than any living person. “And so far,” he says, “everything seems to be all right.”

But, Sommer adds: “People should have some choice. There is no reason to believe radiation is harmful, but we just don’t know.”

In a study published six years ago, Sommer also found that irradiation may shorten, not extend, the shelf life of certain fresh fruits and vegetables.

Wallace Hall, vice president of operations for Radiation Sterilizers, says he has talked to California growers about irradiating their crops, and while “there’s interest if (Vindicator) goes well, there’s no surge coming.”