Safe Produce Practices

摘要

Produce figures prominently in anti-obesity efforts among all market segments, name-ly in the form of salads and vegetarian dishes that health and dietetic professionals say we need to eat more of. Indeed, the just-released USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005 recommends four-and-a-half cups of fruit and vegetables daily, with emphasis on dark green, orange and starchy vegetables plus legumes. But not all headline-grabbing produce stories are positive. Last October, for example, the negative publicity from a salmonella outbreak put a West Virginia produce company out of business, even though inspectors reportedly failed to find so much as a trace of bacteria at the plant. The end came less than four months after 400 people in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Maryland fell ill after eating sandwiches with contaminated tomatoes that they bought at convenience stores.