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Contamination in Organic Vegetables

Abstract

As consumers strive to eat healthy diets, they show an increasing demand for uncooked and minimally processed vegetables preferentially from organic production lines. At the same time, outbreaks of disease have been traced back to the consumption of fresh plant produce contaminated with enteric pathogens. PathOrganic addresses the quality and safety of organically produced vegetables throughout the production chain. The project’s main concern is the contamination of fresh plant produce with bacterial pathogens. Thus, it examines how factors such as environment, plant genotype, fertilizer application technique or soil buffering affect pathogen spread and persistence in organic vegetable products.

Project partners
  • Danish Institute for Food and Veterinary Research, Copenhagen, Denmark (Dorte L. Baggesen, Annette N. Jensen)
  • University of Copenhagen, Frederiksberg, Denmark (Anders Dalsgaard)
  • Agroscope ACW Wädenswil, Switzerland (Brion Duffy)
  • Agroscope Reckenholz-Tänikon ART, Zürich, Switzerland (Franco Widmer)
  • Forschungsinstitut für biologischen Landbau(FiBL), Frick, Switzerland (Paul Mäder)
  • Austrian Research Centers GmbH-ARC, Seibersdorf, Austria (Angela Sessitsch, Evelyn Hackl, Claudia Fenzl)
  • University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria (Jürgen K. Friedel, Thomas Rinnofner),
  • GSF-Forschungszentrum für Umwelt und Gesundheit, Neuherberg/München, Germany (Anton Hartmann, Michael Schmid, Andreas Hofmann)
  • Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden (Janet Jansson, Veronica Arthurson)
  • Wageningen University, Netherlands (Ariena H.C. van Bruggen, Michel Klerks)
  • Plant Research International B.V., Wageningen, Netherlands (Carolien Zijlstra)
FiBL project leader/ contact
  • Mäder Paul (Department of Soil Sciences)
(people who are not linked are former FiBL employees)
FiBL project staff
  • Koller Martin (Departement für Nutzpflanzenwissenschaften)
  • Landau Bettina (Departement für Agrar- und Ernährungssysteme)
(people who are not linked are former FiBL employees)
Further information

As consumers strive to eat healthy diets, they show an increasing demand for uncooked and minimally processed vegetables preferentially from organic production lines. At the same time, outbreaks of disease have been traced back to the consumption of fresh.

FiBL project number 30021
Date modified 13.06.2019
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