Microbial risks associated with Ready-To-Eat Fresh Produce (RTEFP) – A focus on temperate climatic conditions

In the last decade, there has been a significant move toward healthy lifestyle habits and dietary choices, accelerating the global demand, market trade, and consumption of Ready-To-Eat Fresh Produce (RTEFP), including leafy green vegetables, salads, and fruits. However, consumption of such food items may result in human exposure to foodborne pathogens due to minimal processing and the lack of microbial inactivation steps during their preparation. This review summarises the key enteric pathogens potentially contaminating RTEFP, discusses safety risk factors, sources, and transmission, and summarises existing quantitative microbial risk assessment approaches used to model pathogenic loads. A strategic literature search across different scientific databases collated and presented the current state of knowledge for the present review. The research found that on the one hand, several possible contamination routes such as soil, irrigation water, and manure can introduce human pathogenic microorganisms in the pre-harvest stage; on the other, the temperature, storage, packaging, and sanitation processes of the fresh produce chain may affect the growth kinetics of microbes during the post-harvest stage. Many uncertainties and variabilities are likely to be present in microbial growth/ decay/ post-harvest storage/ inactivation data. In addition, the creation of full-spectra dose-response models of pathogens based on transmission routes, response type, and appropriate host species requires future research. Therefore, applying probabilistic/ stochastic quantitative microbial risk assessment models, including the Monte Carlo simulation approach, can benefit the identification and quantification of potential microbiological hazards across the farm-to-fork chain in RTEFP.