(Reuters) -- The U.S. beef industry is renewing its push to get the U.S. Agriculture Department to act on a years-old request to use irradiation on beef carcasses to kill harmful pathogens such as E.coli bacteria.

On the sidelines of the Worldwide Food Expo here, meat industry officials said on Tuesday that irradiating beef carcasses would be an important tool to lessen contamination. But they also said it would still be one of several steps in the prevention process.

"We think the time is now to move forward on this," Scott Eilert, director of meat technology development at Cargill Inc, told Reuters.

"Carcass irradiation needs to be considered. Right now, it is not seeing the light of day," he said of USDA's lack of action on the proposal.

Under the American Meat Institute's proposal, electron beams would be applied to the surface of beef carcasses at meat plants. Because the treatment would not penetrate the meat, proponents claim it should be treated as any other processing aid now in use.

"It is now time for USDA to act on our petition," Jim Hodges, AMI executive vice president, told Reuters.

The petition was submitted about four years ago and in a September 16 letter, AMI urged USDA and its Food Safety and Inspection Service to begin a review of it.

"The requested action pending before USDA is very simple. AMI has asked that FSIS recognize e-beam irradiation as a processing aid when applied to the surface of chilled beef carcasses," the letter said.

Sort & Cull: When it comes to irradiation, meat processors have been caught between a rock and a hard place for more than a decade.

On one hand, ionizing radiation has long been recognized as an extremely effective and safe technology for the elimination of E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella and other pathogens from raw meat and poultry products. That why the FSIS moved in 1999 to permit the bug-killing process in treating meat, meat byproducts and certain meat food products, insisting only that irradiated items be clearly labeled for consumers.

On the other hand, the irradiation label has proven to be a major turnoff at the grocery store. Consumers take one look at the ominous logo and irrational fears suddenly conjure a horrifying montage of the worst science fiction movies ever made. Even shoppers who know better find themselves musing: “is a good steak really worth glowing in the dark for the rest of my half-life?”

Consumers want greater safeguards from the threat of E.coli, but not if it means the acceptance of sound science on their part. Talk about mixed signals.

Now some cock-eyed optimists and proponents of human nature actually believe that consumers will eventually embrace the virtues of irradiation given enough patient education. Craftier advocates insist acceptance will require a friendlier logo and a softer name change (e.g., “electric pasteurization”).

The cynics (realists?) at the AMI don’t see much promise in either option. Savvy to the ways of Washington and official rule-making, the AMI is calling for the USDA to allow irradiation earlier in the processing process. If electronic beams can be applied to whole carcasses before they move to fabrication, the procedure would be treated like other processing aid and labeling of cuts would not be necessary.

Sounds like a good idea to me. Yet I can imagine that a certain nervous ilk might see the approach as unacceptably “sneaky.” Indeed, that’s probably why politicians at the USDA have taken so long to take the matter up.

While mandatory labeling can often serve the cause of transparency and legitimate public choice, it can also be a sorry substitute for courageous and enlightened leadership.

Maybe this is one case where what consumers don’t know can actually keep them safer.

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