This week’s food safety literature highlights several topics for the fresh produce industry, including PFAS mitigation, pathogen survival on strawberries, emerging sanitation technologies for fresh-cut lettuce, and decision-support tools for evaluating microbial hazards in ready-to-eat fresh produce. 

PFAS mitigation in soil, water, fruits, and vegetables
A new scoping review in the Journal of Food Protection evaluated the available literature on strategies to reduce PFAS contamination in water, agricultural soil, fruits and vegetables. The authors found that the current evidence base is still limited and highly variable across study designs, commodities, PFAS compounds, and mitigation approaches. The main takeaway is that while mitigation strategies are being explored, standardized methods and more field-relevant studies are needed before broad recommendations can be made for produce systems.  

Pathogen survival on strawberries at different maturity stages
A study in Food Safety and Health examined the survival of Escherichia coli and Listeria monocytogenes on unripe, semiripe, and ripe strawberries stored at 15°C, 25°C, and 37°C. Both pathogens survived across all maturity stages and storage temperatures. The greatest reductions were observed on unripe strawberries stored at 15°C over five days, while E. coli increased on semiripe strawberries at 37°C over two days. These findings reinforce that postharvest handling conditions, maturity stage, and temperature can influence pathogen persistence on berries. The study also used Weibull modeling to describe how temperature and strawberry maturity affected pathogen behavior. These findings reinforce the importance of temperature control, proper handling, washing before consumption, and continued evaluation of nonthermal interventions for berries. The authors noted that additional research using pathogenic Salmonella would be valuable to strengthen predictive models and better understand food safety risks during strawberry storage and distribution. 

A decision-support tool for microbial hazards in ready-to-eat fresh produce
A new Food Control article presents a spreadsheet-based qualitative risk assessment tool for evaluating microbial hazards in ready-to-eat fresh produce. The tool uses preharvest and postharvest questionnaires, allows risk factors to be weighted equally, by expert opinion, or by user-defined weighting, and calculates final risk scores using a probability-impact matrix. The authors demonstrated the tool using two production scenarios. This type of approach may be useful for identifying key risk factors, comparing mitigation options, and highlighting knowledge gaps in produce safety management.