NERVOUS OVER NITRITE

...However, Kennedy continued, before the phase-out could begin, the Justice Department would have to be consulted on the proper way to proceed — an unusual step in dealing with hazardous additives...

...The difference is," explains Anita Johnson of the Environmental Defense Fund, "that you can take nitrite out of cured meat but not out of lettuce...

...More immediately, several members of Congress, at the behest of the potent American Meat Institute and others in the food industry, introduced bills imposing a moratorium on a nitrite ban...

...Bacon requires no treatment, since normal frying will kill any spores...

...An estimated 80 per cent of human nitrite consumption comes from sources other than meat...

...It took ten days for the bacon to become toxic...

...Commissioner Kennedy hastily repaired to Capitol Hill to tell lawmakers not to worry: The FDA would behave itself this time...

...The spearhead of the industry's counterattack is directed at the validity of the Newberne study...

...The FDA isn't the only government agency showing caution...

...slide-by-slide review of the Newberne experiment...

...Only recently did the FDA issue proposed regulations that the amount of nitrite in meat be reduced to forty parts per million (ppm) from the average existing level of 120 ppm in an effort to cut down on nitrosamine formation...

...The Government would find it impossible to forbid sales of lettuce, cigarettes, or any other popular product...

...Nitrite can combine with amines, chemicals found naturally in meat, to form tumor-causing compounds called nitrosamines...

...The test animals were divided into eighteen groups and fed different diets...

...The deception here is that there is a so-called "threshold" of carcinogenesis...

...Alarmed at the prospect of no longer having bacon next to the eggs on his breakfast plate, Representative Thomas Hagedorn, Minnesota Republican, grandiloquently called his bill the Breakfast Preservation Act of 1978...

...the substance would be phased out over several years...

...Several days after the initial announcement, FDA Commissioner Donald Kennedy said an immediate ban on nitrite would be "irresponsible...

...The industry fears a sales drop...

...But botulism in meat is extremely rare...

...But given a gun-shy FDA and an aggressive, unchallenged meat industry, chances are we will continue to have nitrite on our dinner tables for some time to come...

...Paul Newberne some three months previously but had sat on them, pondering how to handle the news...

...Significantly, these data, reported by United Press International, have not been officially released by the FDA...

...The bills were not pushed...

...Unlike saccharin, which has been in wide use for only some fifteen years, nitrite is not governed by the 1958 Delaney Amendment, which bans additives found to cause cancer in animals...

...The industry, which adds nitrite to 9.1 billion pounds of meat annually, has launched a full-scale campaign to keep nitrite...

...After all, once consumers realized that their bacon, hot dogs, and bologna might look and taste odd once the additive was removed, they might take to the ramparts as they did for Sugar-Free Diet Pepsi...

...Why all this mincing caution...

...Government pussyfooting on nitrite is an old story...

...Richard Lyng, president of the American Meat Institute, disparages the well-respected MIT scientist for "deficiencies in good laboratory practices," citing an FDA audit of the Government-commissioned study while it was in progress...

...Big doses also help make up the difference between rats and humans, who have more cells, lower metabolic rates, and longer lifespans...

...In December the Department of Agriculture withheld release of preliminary results from its own tests of sodium nitrite, saying the information might "place an economic hardship" on meat plants...

...While the FDA hesitates, the $12.5-million-a-year cured meat industry has spread scary tales about the alleged health hazards of nitrite-free food, attacked the highly regarded Newberne study, and spouted other kinds of dubious rhetoric...

...The industry's assertions to the contrary, promising replacements for nitrite have been found — most notably Monsanto's potassium sorbate...

...The answer is that the FDA is still smarting from the spanking it received in 1977, when it attempted to knock the low-calorie artificial sweetener, saccharin, off the market after it was identified as a carcinogen...

...Such canned meats as corned beef hash and beef stew need only be cooked at higher temperatures than usual, the Institute advises...

...Laboratory animals have consumed huge amounts of many substances and developed no cancer...

...The ironically named Consumer Alert Council — a politically conservative organization aimed at countering consumer activists — undermined its own credibility by submitting a statement to the Department of Agriculture that a person would have to eat 15,145 pounds of nitrite-treated bacon each day for a lifetime to equal the amounts fed to the rats...

...Nervous over nitrite Once burned, twice shy at the FDA Larry Light With catlike steps and nervous glances over its shoulder, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) quietly announced late on a Friday afternoon last August that yet another food additive, sodium nitrite, had been found to cause cancer...

...The industry contends it is absurd to ban nitrite in meat when the substance occurs naturally in such leafy vegetables as spinach, lettuce, and celery, as well as in drinking water and saliva...

...Still, the FDA has the power to pull nitrite from the market today under the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1907 and several other laws mandating that the nation's food supply remain pure...

...While public protest on the nitrite issue has been muted — most people don't know what nitrite is anyway — the once-burned-twice-shy FDA was wary of a new controversy...

...The industry's real reason for clinging to nitrite is its effect on color and taste...

...Hot dogs should be cooked well when processed and, as is almost always the case now anyway, should be kept under refrigeration...

...See "Behind the Saccharin Uproar," by William Hines and Judith Randal, in The Progressive for June 1977...

...The release was in lieu of a full-scale press briefing originally planned for Saturday — which meant the story would have hit the papers on Sunday, the day of highest circulation...

...Furthermore, he added, the FDA would have to conduct an exhaustive, months-long, Larry Light is a reporter for Congressional Quarterly...

...The outcry that arose from a nation of dieters hooked on their Tab was deafening: Congress, hip-deep in a flood of angry constituent mail, voted to delay a saccharin prohibition for eighteen months...

...The FDA, as it turned out, had received the test results from MIT's Dr...

...The rule of thumb is that for a typical 100-animal test, one rat equals two million people...

...A Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPI) study showed that bacon would have to contain abnormally high levels of the spore-forming bacterium Clostridium botulinum in the first place, and would then have to be handled with extreme negligence, before any botulism appeared...

...But the most questionable tactic of nitrite partisans is pandering to the widespread public misunderstanding of why large doses of suspected carcinogens are fed to laboratory animals...

...To hear the industry tell it, nitrite is the lone bulwark between the public and deadly botulism...

...Unfortunately for the industry, independent microbiologists generally give high marks to the Newberne experiment, which found cancer in 12.5 per cent of the nitrite-fed rats, a significant level...

...There was no evidence of extraneous interfering factors which may have affected the results," says Dr...

...A confidential FDA estimate, translating the rat consumption of nitrite to people, found that a person eating six pieces of bacon, one bologna sandwich, or one hot dog per day — that's a mere 1.6 ounces — runs a lifetime cancer risk of between one in 740 and one in 3,320...

...The brief press release, as reported in Saturday's traditionally little-read newspapers, said a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study had discovered a significant increase in lymphatic cancer among rats fed nitrite, which is used in cured meats as a preservative as well as a color and flavor enhancer...

...The bacon samples in the VPI study were contaminated with 300 to 500 spores per gram and stored at a temperature of 81 degrees Fahrenheit...

...Although the conclusions of the Newberne study, establishing a direct link between nitrite and cancer, are new, there has been evidence for fifteen years that the substance can indirectly spark a host of other malignancies...

...It is untrue that vast amounts of anything will trigger malignancies...

...The public's exposure to carcinogens must be reduced where practical...

...The Community Nutrition Institute says much cured meat can be packed without nitrite...

...Many people eat at least that much and are unwittingly playing Russian roulette...

...Testing for cancer is extremely expensive — the Newberne study cost $500,000 — so large doses are administered as a matter of economy...

...The auditors found, for instance, a caretaker feeding the wrong food to one group of rats...

...When the Department of Agriculture approved nitrite for meat in 1925, it was as a red coloring agent, not a preservative...

...In the firm's study, sorbate-treated bacon stored at 81 degrees lasted twenty-five days before botulism traces appeared...

...William Lujinsky of the Cancer Research Center at Frederick, Md...