The Produce Contamination Problem : Causes and Solutions

Understanding the causes and contributing factors leading to outbreaks of foodborne illness associated with contamination of fresh produce continues to be a world-wide challenge for everyone from the growers of fresh-cut produce through the entire production and delivery process. Additionally researchers both at universities and in goverment agencies are facing an increased challenge to develop means of preventing these foodborne illness occurrences.

The premise of this book is that once human pathogen contamination of fresh produce occurs, it is extremely difficult to reduce pathogen levels sufficiently to assure microbiological safety with the currently available technologies based on washing with sanitizing agents. This is a consequence of microbial attachment in inaccessible sites on produce surfaces, internationlization of microbial contaminants, either preharvest or during postharvest handling and processing, and formation of resistant biofilms. A wiser strategy would be to avoid crop production conditions that result in microbial contamination to start. These critical, problem-oriented chapters have been written by researchers active in the areas of food safety and microbial contamination during production, harvesting, packing and fresh-cut processing of horticultural crops, and were designed to to provide methods of contamination avoidance.

Coverage includes policy and practices in the US, Mexico and Central America, Europe and Japan. *Addresses foodborne contaminations from a prevention view, providing pro-active solutions to the problems *Covers core sources of contamination and methodologies for identifying those sources *Includes best practice and regulatory information