Ready-to-eat salad could be deadly

SALAD that is labelled “ready to eat” is more dangerous than beef burgers, according to a British food expert, after a spate of infections linked to the product.

Certain types of bacteria found in the bags of pre-cut salad could be almost impossible to kill, said Professor Hugh Pennington, unless the leaves were irradiated.

This follows a Health Protection Agency probe into an outbreak of saladlinked cryptosporidium infections that affected about 300 people in England and Scotland last May.

In the analysis of the exposure to different salad vegetables, a significant link was found between infection and eating pre-cut spinach.

Pennington said the case followed several in the US, where people were “very worried ” about “washed and ready-to-eat ” bagged salad.

Last year, the produce giant Dole recalled bagged salad in 10 states after the Tennessee department of health had found listeria bacteria in one sample.

Demand for salad has boomed because of healthyeating campaigns. But salad is considered most likely to cause food-related illness, largely because greens are grown in the soil and some pathogens can be killed only by heat or strong detergents, not just water.

“It is generally safer to eat a burger than the salad that goes with it,” Pennington said. “You can make vegetables safe only by cooking and you can’t do that with salad. You could irradiate it, but that would be a no-no with the public. You just can’t be sure that the bagged salad, which has been put through a chemical wash to kill the bugs, is actually free of them.

“These bugs are very good at clinging to salad and the risk of cryptosporidium, salmonella and listeria is very real. I would advise people to thoroughly wash the salad.”— © The Daily Telegraph, London