Food Protection Trends - November/December 2019 - 572

GENERAL INTEREST PAPER

The Need for Prevention-based Food Safety
Programs for Fresh Produce
Badrinath Vengarai Jagannathan1 and Paul Priyesh Vijayakumar1*
1

Dept. of Animal and Food Science, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40546-0215, USA

SUMMARY
Food safety practices such as Good Agricultural Practices
(GAP) and Good Handling Practices (GHP) are employed
to reduce food safety risks at the farm level. However,
fruits and vegetables are field crops in which sporadic
contamination can occur at any point, from production
to shipping, and it is difficult to distinguish contaminated
produce items from those free of contamination. Employing
contaminated agricultural water for production and postharvest activities poses a significant threat to the safety of
produce; exposure of plants to contaminated soil or manure
can lead to contamination of the harvestable portion of
the crop. Using a prevention-based approach that focuses
on comprehensive risk analysis at every step, including
growing, harvesting, handling, packaging, and shipping,
appears to be a logical way to reduce the risk of foodborne
illness associated with fresh produce. Prevention-based
approaches are exactly what the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) Food Safety Modernization Act
(FSMA) produce safety rule (PSR), which was established
on the basis of science-based minimum standards, is
intended to achieve. The objective of this paper is to
highlight the various complex routes of fresh produce
contamination and emphasize the importance of using
a holistic prevention-based food safety system that can
reduce the risk of contamination.
OVERVIEW
The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA)-Produce
Safety Rule (PSR), the first set of mandatory federal
standards in the United States for growing, harvesting,
packaging, and handling fruits and vegetables (8), was first
published in the Federal Register on November 27, 2015.
The primary objective of the rule was to strengthen the
current produce food safety system through a preventionbased approach by implementing minimum science-based
best practices (34). Fruit and vegetable growers in the
various categories of the PSR must abide by the rules and
regulations of FSMA-PSR to fulfill federal regulations. Based
on data obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC), between 2000 and 2016, 17,338 illness
outbreaks were reported, of which 558 were related to

produce. These outbreaks led to 15,482 recorded illness,
816 hospitalization, and 20 deaths (12).
Data obtained from the CDC (Table 1) clearly show how
outbreaks have been decreasing over the past few years,
perhaps because of increased food safety awareness, buyer
requirements (third-party audits), and Good Agricultural
Practices (GAP) employed by growers. Although the U.S.
food safety regulations have made great strides with respect
to produce safety, various developments, such as challenges
in the U.S. regulatory bodies, foodborne outbreaks due to
new forms of contamination, and increasing costs associated
with foodborne illnesses, have led to changes in food safety
laws and regulations (3).
SUMMARY
It is important to understand that FSMA-PSR, in general,
includes minimum science-based standards for growing,
harvesting, packing, and holding fruits and vegetables
intended for human consumption. In addition, it is essential
to understand where fruits and vegetables come from,
including routes of contamination and the microbiology
not only of fruits and vegetables but also the environment
in which they are grown and the various resources used to
produce them. Although many different routes of pathogen
entry into fruits and vegetables are possible, soil and water
have been the top two routes of contamination. Numerous
studies have been conducted to understand the way in
which contamination occurs when produce is exposed to
contaminated water, soil, or manure during production,
harvesting, packing, and storage (2, 9, 14, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26).
Foodborne outbreaks in fresh produce have been
identified in many parts of the world (23). In 2015, the
CDC estimated that approximately 48 million new cases
of foodborne illness are reported every year, resulting in
128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths (12). It was also
estimated that the average national cost of foodborne illness
was around $55.5 billion (28). The proportion of outbreaks
linked to fresh produce in the U.S. has been increasing
significantly, from < 1% to almost 6% from 1970 to the
1990s, with 54% of the outbreaks linked to known pathogens
(31). Consumption of fruits and vegetables has significantly
increased in the United States because of its association

*Author for correspondence: Phone: +1 859.257.1546; Fax: +1 859.257.5318; Email: paul.v@uky.edu

572

Food Protection Trends November/December

http://www.foodprotection.org/files/food-protection-trends/nov-dec-19-jagannathan.pdf

Food Protection Trends - November/December 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Food Protection Trends - November/December 2019