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Every single strawberry sold commercially in the Netherlands is irradiated. Not for parasites, but fungus AFAIK.

I thought most mass manufactured foodstuffs are irradiated in the West (but I somehow assumed X-ray tubes were used since they could be switched on and off, although a source may be cheaper...)

To irradiate food, you need to keep the photon energy below 1.022 MeV, or you get residual radioactivity due to pair production.

with pair production I assume you mean electron positron pairs?

how is that harmful in food?

the lifetime of a positron wouldn't be very long, or is the concern free radicals?

as I thought pair production is irrelevant in food irradiation

the tolerable limits in particle energies and doses are very high for truly tiny increases in induced radioactivity. its really marginal as long as the very conservative limits are respected.

see for example:

https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/te_1287_prn.p...

Sounds good to me. From a medical standpoint, I'm aware that irradiated food is perfectly safe. It's the political utility of saying "no residual radioactivity" that I was focused on. But I guess positrons probably aren't much different from electrons in causing that.