Microbial Testing of Fresh Produce: Where is the Value?
Devon Zagory writes: “Product testing is an inefficient tool for enhancing the safety of fresh fruits and vegetables. The probability of finding a contaminant is very low at the bacterial population densities likely to be found. Product testing is wasteful of resources because of the time and expense of the testing itself, but also because all tested products must be put on hold to await the test results in order to avoid a costly recall should a test return a positive result.”