Research Station at Cambridge and somewhat later at the Wantage Research Laboratories of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment. By the mid- or late 1950s national research programs on food irradiation were also underway in Belgium, Canada, France, The Netherlands, Poland, the Soviet Union, and the Federal Republic of Germany. This early history of food irradiation has been reviewed by Goldblith (9), Goresline (10), and Josephson (11). In 1960 the first books on food irradiation appeared, written by Desrosiers and Rosenstock in the United States (12) and Kuprianoff and Lang in Germany (13). A first international meeting devoted to discussion of wholesomeness and legisla­ tive aspects of food irradiation was held in Brussels in 1961 (14). In the United Kingdom the report of a government working party on irradiation of food (15) summarized and evaluated the studies done until 1964. The first commercial use of food irradiation occurred in 1957 in the Federal Republic of Germany, when a spice manufacturer in Stuttgart began to improve the hygienic quality of his products by irradiating them with electrons using a Van de Graaff generator (16). The machine had to be dismantled in 1959 when a new food law prohibited the treatment of foods with ionizing radiation, and the company turned to fumigation with ethylene oxide instead. In Canada irradiation of potatoes for inhibition of sprouting was allowed in 1960 and a private company, Newfield Products Ltd., began irradiating potatoes at Mont St. Hilaire, near Montreal, in September 1965. The plant used a 60Co source and was designed to process some 15,000 t of potatoes a month. It closed after only one season, when the company ran into financial difficulties (17). In spite of these setbacks, interest in food irradiation grew worldwide. At the first International Symposium of Food Irradiation, held in Karlsruhe, Germany, and organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), representa­ tives from 28 countries reviewed the progress made in research laboratories (18). However, health authorities in these countries still hesitated to grant permissions for marketing irradiated foods. At that time only three countries— Canada, the United States, and the Soviet Union— had given clearance for human consump­ tion of a total of five irradiated foods, all treated with low radiation doses. The food industry had not yet made use of the permissions. Irradiated foods were still not marketed anywhere. Questions about the safety for human consumption of irradiated foods were still hotly debated and this was recognized as the major obstacle to commercial utilization of the new process. As a result of this recognition the International Project in the Field of Food Irradiation (IFIP) was created in 1970, with the specific aim of sponsoring a worldwide research program on the wholesomeness of irradiated foods. Under the sponsorship of the IAEA in Vienna, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris, 19 countries joined their re­ sources, with this number later growing to 24 (see Table 1). The World Health