The Fresh Prepared Salads Producer Group (FPSPG), which supplies washed and ready to eat salad packs to all the major UK supermarkets, supported by the Chilled Food Association and the Food Standards Agency has completely refuted the suggestion by the professor that prepared salads are unsafe to eat.
And Bill Keevil, professor of environmental health care at the University of Southampton, who was at the conference in Aberdeen where the salad research was presented, said: “I was extremely disappointed by the quality of the data presented and its interpretation. We have known for a long time the various mechanisms that bacteria can use to attach itself to a range of surfaces, including plants. This is not new.”
The FPSPG, said in a statement: “Our products sold as ‘washed and ready to eat’ are just that. We have long recognised that to produce a safe-to-eat salad one needs safe-to-eat produce off the field. To achieve that, we strive to ensure that dangerous microbes do not get the opportunity to contact our crops - such that hypotheses as to how they initially adhere are irrelevant. The UK prepared salads sector has an unrivalled safety record and employs stringent controls, described as ‘excellent’ by the FSA - not necessarily the case elsewhere in the world. There has not been a confirmed outbreak associated with prepared salad since 2001 in the UK.”
And the Fresh Produce Consortium has criticised media coverage of the issue, which “fails to put in perspective the minute risk of contamination of pre-packed salads,” the association said in a statement. “Good agricultural practices, hygiene preparation and packaging minimise the potential for contamination... Food safety advice is that it is not necessary to re-wash pre-washed salads.”
Frankel, professor of molecular pathogenesis at Imperial College, London, told delegates in Aberdeen that just because some labels claimed food was pre-washed, it does not necessarily make it safe to eat.
According to The Daily Telegraph, Frankel and his team have discovered how salmonella and
E.coli germs can spread to salad and vegetable leaves.
He was quoted in the newspaper saying: “In their efforts to eat healthily, people are eating more salad products, choosing to buy organic brands and preferring the ease of ‘pre-washed’ bagged salads from supermarkets, than ever before.
“All of these factors, together with the globalisation of the food market, mean that cases of salmonella and E.coli poisoning caused by salads are likely to rise in the future.
“This is why it is important to get a head start with understanding how contamination occurs now.”
He told delegates that although there are many salads marketed as washed and ready to eat, consumers should be aware of the risks so they can make informed choices about whether to wash their food or not.
Research was carried out by Frankel with a team from Imperial College, as well as the University of Birmingham. It found that salmonella bacteria are able to latch onto salad leaves and contaminate them.
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