Tasting Atoms—Modernizing Foodways—Negotiating Risks: Food Irradiation in Cold War East Germany

When the first Geneva Conference convened in August 1955, envisioning the atom as yielding a cornucopia of abundance, the atom’s application for improvements in food and agriculture was one major proof for this radiant perspective. At the conference, papers delivered on the application of nuclear radiation in food and agriculture totalled 85 (47 of U.S. origins, 10 of Soviet origins). Both German states eagerly jumped on the bandwagon of nuclear research when they regained their sovereignty and thus also full freedom in research and science policy. Research and development on the application of ionizing rays to food preservation became one of the many exciting new fields of activity. In West Germany the proponents of food irradiation positioned themselves in a strong transnational research network that they had helped to develop. And they headed a large international research project that resulted in the determination of an overall average dose as a limit for irradiated food safety. Nevertheless, irradiating food for human consumption remained forbidden in West Germany, while the recommendations worked as a justification for many countries to establish standards for the irradiation of specific foodstuffs beginning in the 1980s. The German Democratic Republic (GDR), however, was one of the first countries to issue a law that generally allowed food irradiation in 1984. Three food irradiation systems were established during the 1980s. With the enactment of the German unification treaty all three systems were shut down.

This paper will address the question of risk assessment, which was handled quite differently by the East German authorities than by their Western counterparts. I also follow the actors and decipher the very different agendas that the various protagonists of food irradiation in the GDR tried to accomplish. Finally, I ask whether and how “socialist” consumers appreciated the taste of atomic food.