What's in Your Salad? An Observation of Food Handlers' Practices

Introduction: There has been an increase in foodborne illness outbreaks associated with leafy greens in the past few decades. For example, there were approximately 100 outbreaks in the United States (U.S.) due to Salmonella, E. coli O157:H7, Shigella spp., and Campylobacter jejuni reported between 2000 and 2007 associated with leafy greens alone. The foodservice industry has worked with regulatory agencies diligently to develop and implement food safety training materials for supervisors; however, this material may be too generic for employees who work with fresh and fresh-cut produce.

Purpose: The goal of this portion of a larger study is to identify current food safety behaviors in restaurants and grocery stores in the South and Midwest region of the U.S. to develop effective behavior-based, task-specific food safety training materials.

Methods: Observations of standard operating procedures for fresh-cut produce were conducted in 34 establishments (restaurants and grocery stores). Previously developed observation tools were used to identify behaviors related to food handling, food preparation, food storage, and facility upkeep.

Results: The results demonstrated that although all of the 34 establishments observed had fully equipped hand-washing facilities, only 44% employees handling leafy greens were observed washing their hands at any point during the observation. Many employees relied on glove changing as an alternative to hand-washing. Specifically, of the 59% of employees handling leafy greens, only 56% of them washed their hands before changing their gloves. Additionally, only 59% of establishments record refrigeration temperatures of leafy greens, suggesting a need for improved temperature documentation of leafy greens.   

Significance: The overarching goal of this study is to develop behavior-based, task-specific food safety training materials for fresh-cut produce for restaurants and grocery stores in an effort to reduce the number of foodborne illness outbreaks.