Radioactive cobalt-60 has been the only practical radiation source until very recently, when reliable electron beam and X-ray sources came onto the market. Unsurprisingly, the public often associate irradiation with inducing radioactivity in the food, a physical impossibility with the sources permitted for food irradiation (Diehl, 1995).
However, when informed, the public appears to accept the lack of induced radioactivity and even the most vocal critics of the process no longer put it forward as a reason to reject irradiation. However, a more subtle campaign against the process is still mounted by associating irradiation with radioactivity by way of references to
‘nuclear radiation’, ‘nuked food’, ‘zapped food’ or even ‘sources using radioactive waste’ (for example, Hauter and Worth 2008).