WASHINGTON — It’s convenient and popular, a healthy option for harried shoppers. But bagged lettuce suspected of causing a multi- state outbreak of E. coli illness raises new questions about whether pre-cut produce is riskier than whole vegetables.
James Gorny, senior adviser for produce safety at the Food and Drug Administration, said bagged greens represent a disproportionate number of recalls, chiefly because they’re easier to identify than whole produce. But precut produce is not inherently riskier than whole vegetables, he said.
Others disagree. “I’ve been avoiding bagged lettuce for years,” said Michael Doyle, a nationally known microbiologist who directs the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia. “I’ve been concerned about this for some time.”
Lettuce is first processed in the field, where cutting utensils can come into contact with soil and spread contamination from the dirt to the crop, Doyle said.
Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said cross-contamination is a danger with bagged lettuce, where “you’re taking lettuce that could be grown in different areas and batching it together. . . . If you’ve got one infected field, you’re mixing it with lettuce that would otherwise be uninfected, and now the whole batch is contaminated.”
The FDA is crafting regulations for growing, harvesting and processing produce, Gorny said.
