Marian Burros quotes Carol Tucker Foreman, director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America, saying:

"There is nowhere in the world where a large population has eaten large amounts of irradiated food over a long period of time. It makes me queasy that we are going to feed it to schoolchildren."

But check out this PBS Frontline Interview, posted on the Consumer Federation of America website:

Frontline: Do you support irradiating ground beef?

[Carol Tucker Foreman]: I'm not opposed to irradiating ground beef. If I were supplying a nursing home, I'd probably make sure that the meat came in irradiated. My concern is that I don't want a system that says you can have fecal matter all over it, and then irradiate it. Irradiated poop won't make you sick, but it's still poop. ...

There are some worker safety concerns with irradiation. There are some environmental safety concerns. It's very expensive, and if it's not used exactly right, it makes the meat taste really bad. Those last two are important reasons why irradiation hasn't been adopted more widely. .."

It looks like what she meant is that irradiation alone isn't going to solve all the food-borne illness problems, while Burros is trying to scare people.