Center for Produce Safety commits $3.9 million to 12 research projects

The Center for Produce Safety (CPS) ­has funded 12 new research projects, valued at just over $3.9 million, to help answer the industry’s most urgent produce food safety questions.

The topics included in the 12 projects are risk evaluation and mitigation of Listeria monocytogenes and salmonella, cyclospora control, and sanitation for harvesting bins and picking bags. A complete list is provided below, with links to project abstracts. From leafy greens to tree fruit to onions, the research has been vetted by industry experts on the CPS Technical Committee and is ready to begin in January 2022.

“CPS thanks our Campaign contributors and the Specialty Crop Block Grant Programs in California, Florida, Texas, and Washington for their commitment to food safety,” said Vic Smith, chair of CPS’s volunteer Board of Directors and CEO of grower-shipper J.V. Smith Companies. “CPS succeeds because of our very unique community — the contributors funding our work, the researchers answering our questions, the Technical Committee guiding them, and the Board of Directors that keeps us all focused on the mission: Fund the Science, Find Solutions, and Fuel the Change.”

Joy Waite-Cusic, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Oregon State University, is leading one of two CPS-funded onion research projects. Waite-Cusic stated: “Dry bulb onions have generally been considered a low-risk crop, but then the 2020 outbreak happened in the United States and, more recently, an outbreak associated with onions from Mexico. The U.S. outbreak investigation failed to identify the cause of Salmonella contamination. Our CPS project is designed to evaluate how specific industry practices, including water and clay applications, may contribute to widespread contamination and that could result in an outbreak.”

First-time CPS-funded scientist, Kansas State University Associate Professor Valentina Trinetta, Ph.D., shared: “Our research aims to develop science-based recommendations that will help improve cleaning and sanitation practices for harvesting operations while managing food safety risks tied to the sanitation of picking bags and harvesting bins for the tree fruit industry. Our team is excited to get started!”

All projects will begin in January 2022. Findings will be reported to the industry by researchers at CPS’s annual Research Symposium and via CPS through other knowledge transfer activities, including CPS’s website.

CPS research awards are made possible by funds provided by the Center for Produce Safety’s Campaign Contributors, the Specialty Crop Block Grant programs in California Department of Food and Agriculture, Washington State Department of Agriculture, Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, and Texas Department of Agriculture.

Projects include:

Teresa Bergholz, Ph.D., Michigan State University
Quantifying risk associated with changes in EHEC physiology during post-harvest pre-processing stages of leafy green production