MMMMMMM...IRRADIATED FECES!

Still not convinced that the USDA is more corrupt than Enron? How 'bout this item: They convened focus groups to see if they could get away with calling irratiated food "pasteurised" and met with a resounding 'NO' - then ignored the results and pretended TO CONGRESS that the research hadn't happened, in order to get such a provision into the farm bill. Gosh, last time I heard, lying to congress was a pretty serious offense.
But the bigger joke is that we have warm, fuzzy feelings about the word "pasteurization" and don't want it debased this way, when it's basically simply a way to cook fecal matter in milk to the point that bacteria won't spread so much. As the CDC notes in its pro-irradiation pep-talk, milk ... sickened and killed consumers by the thousands a century ago, before pasteurization took hold. By what means did it sicken & kill 'em? Besides tuberculosis, it often carried Listeria, Campylobacter, Yersinia, Salmonella, Staphylococcus, and ... you guessed it ... Escherichia coli. Yeesh, let's zap that stuff!