National and Transnational Food Irradiation Research as a Cold War Recipe
Two of the most famous innovations in warfare that provided the decisive preconditions for sustained research and development on – and eventual commercialization of – food irradiation were radar and atomic weapons. Radar’s development gave rise to powerful klystron tubes, improved wave guide techniques, and electronic circuits and components, which made available machines capable of generating ionizing radiation of a power hitherto unachieved. The innovation of the atomic bomb resulted in a vast capacity for the production of cobalt-60 and other sources of ionizing gamma radiation.18 The Manhattan Project not only gave birth to the first atomic bomb but also to systematic research interest in the irradiation of food. This interest was at first stimulated by efforts to protect workers and bomb constructors from the hazards of radioactivity.19 But the research agenda was soon extended when in 1952 the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) as legal heir of the Manhattan Project set up a program to explore the possibilities of using reactor produced radioisotopes as radiation sources to sterilize food and pharmaceuticals.20 Thus, the Manhattan Project paved the way for the development of radiation preserved foods, even though food irradiation did not entirely depend on knowledge, technology and needs that emerged from the atomic bomb project. But the bomb’s very existence was of critical importance for the rapidly increasing efforts to put irradiated foods on the tables in the US and elsewhere.
Envisioning Atomic Food for Peace and War in National Food Irradiation Programs in the 1950s USA US food irradiation research began as wartime military research not only in the immediate context of the Manhattan Project. The MIT food technologist Bernard Proctor launched work with sterilization of meats when he directed a large food research program at the Institute for the Office of the Quartermaster General in World War II. Proctor’s first radiation source was a big air-insulated Van de Graaf at MIT.21 The researchers continued with the meat sterilization project after the war. In 1945, food technology became a department in its own right at MIT and this separation from the biology department was accompanied by a reorientation toward the physical sciences in research and teaching.22 The department closely collaborated with the MIT departments of physics, electrical 18 19
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Siu, United States Program, 1963, pp. 19‒26. Hacker, Tail, 1987. This concern and related activities survived the war since the effects of nuclear radiation on food products and packaging became a subject of exploration in nuclear test explosions. Operation Teapot conducted at the Nevada test site from February through May 1955 was one of these test series that explored the effects of radiation on food. Documents are available after registration at the DTIC website on operation teaport http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA995308, accessed February 5, 2013. I am most thankful to Alex Wellerstein who brought these documents to my attention. On Operation Teapot see Hacker, Elements, 1994, pp. 164‒169. Hearings 1954, p. 78. Goldblith, Microbes, 1995, p. 192. Buchanan, Meal, 2005, p. 231.
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