Chiquita prepared salads subsidiary Fresh Express is to fund a $2 million research project into the presence of E.coli on fresh produce.

It is hoped the study will help the fresh-cut sector prevent incidents of E.coli contamination on leafy vegetables, such as the recent outbreak of the pathogen on spinach, which killed one person and left almost 100 people ill.

Fresh Express said it will make the research public in recognition of the benefits it could offer both the industry and consumers.

An independent team of scientists, academics and experts from federal and state food-safety agencies will compile the study. The team has been working on the project on a non-paid, voluntary basis since May last year to develop research priorities related to the source, mode of action and life cycle of E. coli and the pathogenic contamination of lettuce and leafy greens.

Tanios Viviani, president of Fresh Express, said: “At Fresh Express, food safety has been and will always be our number one priority in every phase of our operations. We have long been dedicated to food-safety innovation, and this research effort is part of that ongoing commitment. We are grateful to these leading experts for their generous contribution of time and expertise to guide this initiative.

“We are hopeful that this research will yield new knowledge, practices and technologies that the entire fresh-cut produce industry can use to provide consumers with ready-to-eat produce that is consistently safe and healthy.”

According to Dr. Osterholm, director of the Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, who is leading the research, the group has so far evaluated the existing body of knowledge relating to E. coli contamination in fresh produce and collaborated on the most critical research gaps in fresh produce contamination, ranging from growing and harvesting to cooling, transporting, processing and packaging.

“We systematically used our individual areas of expertise to scrutinize the entire supply chain and ultimately uncover the areas where we collectively agreed more research was necessary,” he said. “From this process, the five critical research priorities began to emerge fairly consistently.”

The group’s research priorities include determining the potential for lettuce or spinach to be contaminated by E.coli; identifying new mitigation strategies and technologies to reduce the risk of contamination; identifying sources, vehicles and factors that affect the degree of contamination or extent of contamination; determining the ability of E.coli to multiply in the presence of normal background flora following the harvest of produce such as lettuce or spinach; and determine the ability of E. coli to survive composting processes.