WASHINGTON — Poultry processors got the green light Friday to begin zapping chickens, turkeys and game hens with gamma rays to kill bacteria.

But the poultry industry isn't wild about the idea. Only one plant is expressing interest in irradiating chicken. And consumer activists worry about the safety.

The Agriculture Department's new regulations could allow irradiated chicken and other poultry products to start showing up in markets by late October.

The regulations will allow federally approved facilities to use irradiation to treat fresh or frozen, uncooked whole or cut-up poultry. The process involves passing food through a chamber containing rods of radioactive cobalt-60 or cesium-137, where it is bombarded with gamma rays. Illness-causing bacteria, insects and molds are destroyed.

H. Russell Cross, administrator of the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, said treating chicken with radiation controls bacteria "with no hazard to consumers and with no adverse affects on the poultry's nutritional value."

Food poisoning caused by the bacteria salmonella is among the food safety service's top targets, and chickens are a major source of the problem.

USDA estimates that 35% of chicken carcasses are contaminated with salmonella, but Lawrence Glickman, head of pathobiology at Purdue University, puts the figure at more than 50%.

Kay Golan, spokeswoman for the national Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, said the organization receives about 45,000 reports of salmonella cases a year. Golan said incidents of salmonella probably are much higher than that, between 800,000 and 4 million cases annually, because most cases aren't reported to the CDC.

Consumer groups, however, say there are better ways of making chicken safer, starting with improved plant inspections.

"The approval of irradiation for poultry is a quick-fix approach to improving a highly inadequate poultry inspection system in this country," said Ellen Haas, executive director of Public Voice for Food and Health Policy.

Consumer advocates worry that the process reduces the levels of some nutrients and may leave tiny amounts of undesirable chemicals in the meat. And they question the safety implications for plant workers, communities and the environment from the use and transportation of radioactive materials.