Irradiated foods are desirable

Thanks to Valerie Phillips for her column on E. coli (Sept. 20).

When it comes to crop nutrients, we're darned if we do and darned if we don't fertilize "naturally." Our increasingly overpopulated world escalates pressures on food supply, croplands, water resources and air and water quality. Health is jeopardized by E. coli in "prewashed," packaged spinach, fertilized — somewhere — with human and/or animal wastes. Water supplies are bacterially contaminated in many places. Schoolkids get sick from cafeteria strawberries. Fresh produce, especially offseason, is flown in from places where manure is the only fertilizer.

Given the dilemma, isn't food irradiation responsible as well as highly desirable? We could have our hamburger rare, our spinach uncooked, our lettuce crisp and fresh and our fruits and vegetables sweet and mature, harvested ripe instead of green. Please, government, allow us the choice of irradiated foods, for our own good and enjoyment.

Ivan Weber

Salt Lake City