Leafy greens such as spinach and lettuce are among the most nutrient-packed foods we can eat—and some of the most prone to make us miserable, or worse. The pathogenic bacterium Escherichia coli O157:H7 causes millions of illnesses globally each year, health authorities say, including thousands of severe infections that can lead to kidney failure and even death.
The infections are often contracted from contaminated produce irrigated with water that contains animal waste runoff or grown in open fields where intruding wildlife leave feces.
To help address this challenge, a University of Maryland food safety expert is conducting microbial research to determine best practices for commercial growers who find evidence of wildlife faeces, or scat, in their fields.
Shirley Micallef, a professor in the Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, recently concluded a series of field trials on Maryland’s Eastern Shore that examined how E. coli moves from scat to a lettuce crop following a rain event.
The results from the research, which involved other faculty and students in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, were recently published in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science.
FoodWorld 