Salmonella in your salad: the cost of convenience?

Using whole, unprocessed vegetables and washing them thoroughly will reduce risk of food poisoning.

An investigation into what could have caused the the salmonella outbreak in lettuce prepackaged at a Victorian farm could show results as soon as this week.

The outbreak has left 62 people sick in Victoria, with worries more may be coming forward.

There are reports the outbreak might also be linked to illness in Queensland and South Australia. Authorities across the country have recalled products with best before dates leading up to and including 14 February.

Processed foods are a staple of the modern Western, time-poor diet, but are also blamed for increasing obesity rates and childhood allergies. By contrast, prepackaged salads are appealing as they are considered healthy and natural.


 Get The Latest By Email

Weekly Magazine Daily Inspiration

But the recent outbreak highlights that raw agricultural products – when simply washed and marketed in bags – aren’t always as good as we may think.

Bacteria and salads

Salmonella is a common food-borne pathogen often associated with poultry. This bacteria is found in many animal species though and can easily contaminate non-animal food products.

Illness from prepackaged salads isn’t uncommon. The current salmonella outbreak in Australia comes at the same time as an outbreak, of another bacteria, listeria monocytogenes, in prepackaged salad in North America.

In 2006, an outbreak of Escherichia coli in prepackaged spinach killed three people and made more than 200 sick in the United States.

And in 2012 about 300 cases of Cryptosporidium parvum were linked to ready-to-eat salad in the United Kingdom. Then in 2013, prepackaged watercress salads were associated with 19 cases of E. coli in the UK.

Salmonella is a common food-borne pathogen often associated with poultry. from shutterstock.com

Early speculation has linked the Australian salmonella outbreak to fertiliser of animal origin, such as one sourced from chickens, though this is yet to be proven.

How salads are processed

Leafy vegetables can become contaminated by bugs, either directly from animals, agricultural run-off water or fertilisers.

The later processing of these vegetables includes operations such as breaking up lettuce heads and chopping leaves. This increases the surface area of the produce and provide new niches for bacteria (and potentially other pathogens) to adhere to and hide. This step may actually minimise the effectiveness of subsequent steps producers use to clean the product – such as washing with chlorinated water.

Then, packaging the leaves into bags means that single point sources of microbial contamination are spread from one point to several. This could turn an isolated case of food poisoning into an outbreak.

The current outbreak seems to support this model of dissemination, as it originated from a single supplier and has affected several brands of prepackaged lettuce mixes sold at Coles and Woolworths.

What you can do

Suppliers have a legal requirement to ensure their products are free from harmful microorganisms; but occasionally the checks and balances can fail. So how do we protect ourselves from illness when eating salads?

Using whole, unprocessed vegetables and washing them thoroughly will reduce the risk of poisoning.

Good food handling practises will too. These include washing and drying hands thoroughly before food preparation, appropriate storage of foods, and separation of raw foods (particularly meat) from foods that have already been cooked or don’t require cooking.

Consumers may choose to rewash bagged leaves. The jury is out on this, with some suggesting it might actually increase the risk of food-borne illness.

But the increases in risk are largely based on an assumption of inadequate kitchen hygiene and food handling practices. With good practises in place in your home an additional wash is unlikely to be detrimental to your health.

Enclosures

  1. ^ ()

About The Author

Andrew Greenhill, Senior Lecturer in Microbiology, Federation University Australia

Appeared On The Conversation

AVAILABLE LANGUAGES

English Afrikaans Arabic Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Danish Dutch Filipino Finnish French German Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Indonesian Italian Japanese Korean Malay Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Spanish Swahili Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese

follow InnerSelf on

facebook icontwitter iconyoutube iconinstagram iconpintrest iconrss icon

 Get The Latest By Email

Weekly Magazine Daily Inspiration

Monday, 17 May 2021 08:55

Maybe you’re trying to eat healthier these days, aiming to get enough of the good stuff and limit the less-good stuff. You’re paying attention to things like fiber and fat and vitamins… and...

Wednesday, 19 May 2021 08:07

For many people, the thing they’ve missed most during the pandemic is being able to hug loved ones. Indeed, it wasn’t until we lost our ability to hug friends and family did many realise just how...

Wednesday, 28 April 2021 08:51

Insects are attracted to landscapes where flowering plants of the same species are grouped together and create big blocks of color, according to new research.

Wednesday, 26 May 2021 08:54

The term “exercise is medicine” is rightfully well publicised. It’s one of the best ways to stay healthy, yet medicine doesn’t work if you aren’t prepared to take it.

Friday, 14 May 2021 16:24

The chakras set the frequencies that give rise to every aspect of the human experience. The foods we eat have consciousness and provide an energetic blueprint that stabilizes and entrains...

Saturday, 15 May 2021 16:24

There exist several approaches to obtaining optimal health, all of them important, each of them acting in some way on all the aspects of our beings. I know that if a technique were valid for...

New Attitudes - New Possibilities

InnerSelf.comClimateImpactNews.com | InnerPower.net
MightyNatural.com | WholisticPolitics.com | InnerSelf Market
Copyright ©1985 - 2021 InnerSelf Publications. All Rights Reserved.