Fruit & vegetable business - Fruit and vegetables held responsible for 33 percent of food poisoning cases

Mike Doyle, director of University of Georgia, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Center for Food Safety reminded in a contribution on the university web site, that raw fruit and vegetable bear a high risk to foodborne illnesses.

“For a time, foodborne illness was most often connected with undercooked meats, and most product recalls and outbreaks were connected to meat products. Today, 33 percent of cases are tracked back to raw produce”, Doyle said in a contribution for his university’s web site and referring to the altered food consumption behaviour in USA.

However, the risk is not limited to the US, but is also an obvious fact, where people enjoy eating raw, uncooked fruits and vegetables. Especially, with the growing offer of convenience products like pre-washed, pre-cut salads and fruit pieces in bags and plastic bowls bear an increased risk of contamination with pathogenic bacteria.

Doyle and many of his food safety scientist colleagues including our microbiology specialists at AGROLAB consider raw sprouts among the most hazardous of all fresh foods. Also the fashionable preparation of smoothies pushed the risk for foodborne bacterial infections dramatically, if the hygiene rules are not strictly obeyed and the products have not been prepared with special care.

We offer sophisticated microbiological quality control and are not only able to monitor any pathogenic bacteria on fruit and vegetables and pre-cut products, but we are also offering the analysis for viral contamination like Norovirus, Hepatitis A and E. (c.f. previous issue of AGROLAB RADAR). We have established analytical packages based on the recommendation by the DGHM (German Society for Hygiene and Microbiology).

Only regular independent control of hygienic conditions during cultivation, harvesting and production can prevent from severe infections and illnesses caused by microbes and viruses on “healthy” raw food.