Randall Lutter

About the author: Randall Lutter is a fellow with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI)- Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies. The American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution established the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies to provide analyses of existing regulatory programs and new regulatory proposals.

Food irradiation can help reduce food-borne illnesses. All major international public health organizations have endorsed food irradiation as a risk-free, practical method for improving food safety, yet the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration have been slow to approve the process. Criticism of food irradiation by several public interest groups and reluctance by grocers to offer irradiated foods are also barriers to making irradiated foods available in the United States. Despite those barriers, test marketing has shown that irradiation is well accepted by...