Tag Archives: bagged salad

CDC: 11 ill and one death linked to Dole salads; products pulled

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I spent the past couple of days in a room with some excellent fresh produce food safety colleagues making extension materials for industry folks; we talked a bit about Listeria monocytogenes and cut leafy greens.

Irony is ironic sometimes.Bagged-Salad-by-Justin-Sullivan-Getty-Images-300x200

The process of growing, harvesting, cutting, washing and packaging leafy greens can be problematic when it comes to Listeria monocytogenes. Sanitizers in wash water helps reduce cross-contamination. Once the pathogen is in the bag, there’s not much a consumer can do (other than cook it).

CDC says 12 cases of listeriosis, including a death, are linked to Dole products packaged in a Springfield, OH plant. Routine sampling and whole genome sequencing helped solve the mystery of the cluster (which had been investigated since September).

Twelve people infected with the outbreak strain of Listeria have been reported from six states since July 5, 2015. The number of ill people reported from each state is as follows: Indiana (1), Massachusetts (1), Michigan (4), New Jersey (1), New York (4), and Pennsylvania (1). WGS has been performed on clinical isolates from all 12 ill people and has shown that the isolates are highly related genetically.

Listeria specimens were collected from July 5, 2015 to December 23, 2015. Ill people range in age from 3 years to 83, and the median age is 66. Sixty-nine percent of ill people are female. All 12 (100%) ill people reported being hospitalized, and one person from Michigan died as a result of listeriosis. One of the illnesses reported was in a pregnant woman.

Epidemiologic and laboratory evidence available at this time indicates that packaged salads produced at the Dole processing facility in Springfield, Ohio and sold under various brand names are the likely source of this outbreak.

State and local health departments are interviewing ill people about the foods they may have eaten or other exposures in the month before their illness began. Of five ill people who were asked about packaged salad, all five (100%) reported eating a packaged salad. Two (100%) of two ill people who specified the brand of packaged salad eaten reported various varieties of Dole brand packaged salad.

As part of a routine product sampling program, the Ohio Department of Agriculture collected a Dole brand Field Greens packaged salad from a retail location and isolated Listeria. This packaged salad was produced at the Springfield, Ohio Dole processing facility. In January 2016, WGS showed that the Listeria isolate from the packaged salad was highly related genetically to isolates from ill people. This information linked the illnesses to Dole brand packaged salads produced at the Dole processing facility in Springfield, Ohio.

On January 21, 2016, Dole reported to CDC that it had stopped production at the processing facility in Springfield, Ohio. The company also reported that it is withdrawing packaged salads currently on the market that were produced at this facility. The withdrawal does not affect other Dole products.

CDC recommends that consumers do not eat, restaurants do not serve, and retailers do not sell packaged salads produced at the Dole processing facility in Springfield, Ohio.

These packaged salads were sold under various brand names, including Dole, Fresh Selections, Simple Truth, Marketside, The Little Salad Bar, and President’s Choice. The packaged salads can be identified by the letter “A” at the beginning of the manufacturing code found on the package.

The U.S. cases may be linked to the Canadian Lm outbreak, based on the product, distribution and timeline, but there’s not much info from officials to confirm the connection.

Dole’s recall notice can be found here.

Tennessee man finds $10 bill is bagged salad

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Kyle Hubbard bought a bagged salad at a Target in Cordova, Tennessee, and found another green item among the lettuce — a $10 bill.

moneylettuce_croppedHubbard purchased the Fresh Express 50/50 Mix on October 21, which contains baby spinach and spring mix. He was concerned that the $10 bill might have contaminated other salads before they were bagged.

 “You’ve seen some salad tainted with E. coli and listeria and those are germs and that’s hard to see,” Hubbard told WMC Action News 5. “But when it’s a more blatant object that’s clearly visible, it’s quite concerning how that made it outside the doors of that facility.”

Target’s corporate offices were notified of this incident.

“At Target, we take food quality very seriously,” a spokesperson told WMC Action News 5. “I have shared the information with our team and would encourage you to reach out to Fresh Express directly.”

Target also offered Hubbard $24 worth of coupons, but he declined. It is unclear whether he kept the $10 bill or not.

Shurley some mistake: should packaged salads be washed again or not? (Not)

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There’s some merit in ignoring garbage food safety news stories so they don’t take on too much credibility.

But then, garbage should also be crushed, quickly, factually, and mercilessly, so it doesn’t get repeated forever.

The Consumers Union theatrics about bacteria found in bagged leafy greens has found new legs in Canada – always a week behind — in stories with quotes like, “If you buy ready-made salad greens, wash them before eating.”

This is bull poop.

The March issue of Consumer Reports says that tests on 208 samples of salads sold in bags or plastic containers, conducted by Consumers Union revealed that 39 per cent of the salads analyzed revealed the presence of several types of bacteria, including total coliforms and Enterococcus, both found “in the human digestive tract.”

The Canadian wire story says: “Translation: poop.”

Not quite.

Trevor Suslow of UC Davis told the Perishable Pundit that “a normal head of lettuce is colonized, not contaminated with, a diversity of microbiota, including diverse types of bacteria. Only a small fraction of the total normal bacteria on lettuce can be grown or cultured in the lab. The total numbers of bacteria on a leaf far exceed the number of a single group like the Total Coliforms that were a prime target in the survey. A smaller subset of Total Coliform bacteria are the fecal coliforms. We eat lots and lots of microbes all the time. …

“I am certainly not a medical or public health expert and I am simplifying this quite a bit just to ensure that you are aware that a total coliform or fecal coliform doesn’t necessarily indicate fecal contamination in the plant world. Their numbers on a leaf or fruit do not relate well to risk of illness or true and serious pathogens being present. When one follows standard protocols, developed for dairy, meat, drinking water, and wastewater reclamation, for example, for enumerating total coliform populations from plants, one often gets high numbers of these plant colonizers. They are very tough to wash off…”

“Purchasing packaged salads or whole heads is a matter of personal choice. We do both in my family. I always wash loose leaf lettuces to remove any adhering soil. I never wash packaged salads. I do not support or believe that re-washing packaged salads should be a recommendation for the home consumer. A large and diverse panel of experts published a comprehensive article in 2007 detailing the scientific evidence for the lack of benefit and the greater risk of cross-contamination in the home.”

That report is available here. The conclusion is there is a greater chance of cross-contamination during the rewash of packaged greens. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration also states, “… there is no need to wash fresh-cut leafy greens again if they are labeled as "washed," "triple washed," or "ready-to-eat" on the package. Although not recommended, if end users do re-wash RTE fresh-cut leafy greens, having appropriate sanitary washing and drying conditions in the foodservice, retail or in-home food preparation environment to reduce the potential for cross contamination of fresh-cut RTE produce with human pathogens. “

The U.K. Food Standards Authority made a similar statement about no need for rewashing after the Brits had a row about the issue documented in Salad Smackdown ’08.

The issue is complicated, but for Consumers Union to come out with a soundbite about washing greens is great PR and lousy public policy. For journalists not to check is becoming standard for an industry in decline. For the producers of bagged leafy greens, this is an opportunity to tout your food safety efforts and market them at retail so consumers can choose.