Executive Summary
Covered environment growers and packers can leverage many of the basic food safety learnings developed from open-field, packing and processing food safety research efforts and adapt them to be relevant to the various forms of covered agriculture. Initial takeaways from CPS-supported research include:
- Survey results taken from interviews with food safety extension specialists and CEA growers was augmented with a literature review and synthesized into a priority list for development. Among the top needs were creating enhanced food safety awareness among CEA executives, creating an operational focus on Lm control and adoption of appropriate design and build strategies to limit niches where Lm and other pathogens can enter the facility and survive, the creation of aggressive, comprehensive cleaning and sanitation strategies verified by equally aggressive environmental monitoring programs, and the development of programs to understand and control the microbial communities resident on soilless growth substrates and nutritional inputs.
- Die-off rates of E. coli and Salmonella surrogates in the field are much more rapid than those observed for the same surrogates in shade or hoop houses. The surrogates persisted and grew in the hoop house as opposed to the field where die-off followed a bi-phasic pattern commonly observed in other studies.
- Attenuated pathogen strains can be transferred by tools and gloved human hands to the product in shade or hoop house environments.
- Foliar treatments with preharvest sanitizers demonstrated limited reductions in viable bacteria on the surface of fruits.