Perfectly sanitized dimpled spinach leaves or tender greens like baby lettuce has been high on the wish list of the $3.1-billion bagged salad industry since its inception. The race to develop better wash systems for cleaning took off in earnest in 2006, after the high profile E. coli O157:H7 outbreak linked to bagged spinach killed five people and sickened more than 200, leaving the leafy green industry with a black eye and an ego-bruising $350-million price tag in recalls and lost sales.

Advances to date in cleaning salad greens have mostly centered on chlorine-based washes and plenty of testing throughout the supply chain. But for organic salad producers, such as Earthbound Farm, a wash additive may not be an option because it has not been approved for organic use. So the company teamed up with the Institute for Food Safety and Health (IFSH) at the Illinois Institute of Technology to look for solutions outside the bag. One of the most promising: high-power ultrasound.

When applied to leafy greens, high-powered ultrasound creates millions of tiny bubbles along a leaf's surface. As they burst at a rate of a thousand times a second, they provide high-energy shock waves that can get into the leaf's nooks and crannies to dislodge pathogens, which are then whisked away in the sanitized wash. (Earthbound is looking at citrus and peracetic acid–based sanitizers, both sanctioned for use with organic products.)

"Mostly we're after E. coli O157:H7; norovirus that causes winter vomiting, and we'll continue working with salmonella and Listeria as well," says IFSH director, Robert Brackett.

Will Daniels, senior vice president of operations and organic integrity at Earthbound, says they hope to move the equipment out of the lab and apply it to their process within the next few months. "That's assuming the pilot studies between now and then are successful and show we don't end up with pureed lettuce at the end of the line. That would be a deal breaker," Daniels adds.

It's not the first time high-powered ultrasound has been used as a sanitizer. The wine industry has used it (pdf) to clean oak barrels since 2006. Employing ultrasound, however, does not guarantee sterile produce, and Earthbound says they will not put forward such a claim.

But early results about its effectiveness in eliminating pathogens are promising—and come at a particularly key time. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Microbiological Data Program is on the federal chopping block thanks to budget cuts, although it currently tests more than 15,000 samples of fruits and vegetables a year from 11 different produce points across the U.S.

Others in the industry are exploring other sanitization techniques that include ultraviolet light, cold plasma and high pressure to eliminate pathogens on produce. The developers at Earthbound declined to specify the cost of the new ultrasound procedure compared with traditional methods but it will undoubtedly be more expensive—it may add as much as $200,000 to the cost of a sanitation line, according to Cavitus, a company working on the technology.

Organizations like the Center for Produce Safety at the University of California, Davis, have been dispensing research grants to study produce safety. "If you think about a 50-acre field of spinach, it's grown outside and is likely to get contaminated somehow—either through dust-borne E. coli, overflying geese, pigs that get loose. That's the functional reality of things that are grown outside," says Bill Marler, a Seattle-based attorney that specializes in food safety cases.

4 Comments

1. 1. dbtinc 08:35 AM 3/19/12

   I know some people for whom such a treatment might be a benefit!

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2. 2. scientific earthling 06:11 PM 3/19/12

   Bagged salads, fruit and vegetables are packed into poly-film packs with an inert atmosphere that does not support most life. Result every single cell of the contents die. The fruit and vegetables you buy conventionally harvested and displayed are still alive, ever cell continues to grow and mature long after harvest.
   
   Fruit and vegetables packed in inert gasses remain seemingly fresh for longer, but once the pack is opened and the contents exposed to Oxygen, the contents start to decompose instantly.
   
   Now you know why peaches and pears and other stuff you buy goes rotten so soon. Grapes taste sweet on the first day you take them out of the pack, next day they are sour an inedible.

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3. 3. Johnay 02:08 AM 3/20/12

   I'm given to understand that e coli can't be washed off because it makes its way into the plant immediately upon contamination. Maybe this will help with other contaminants, but with e coli this would be just so much "see, we're 'doing something'" theater. What's needed is prevention.

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4. 4. Quinn the Eskimo in reply to Vendicar Decarian 10:43 AM 3/23/12

   Vendicar, have you ever seen COPS on FOX? Our police force is already a gang, with guns and badges.
   
   To be a county cop, IQ of under 90 is preferred.

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