If you need another reason to grow your own salad greens this upcoming gardening season, here is on from the March 2010 issue of Consumer Reports magazine,
You might think that “pre-washed” and “triple-washed” salad greens sold in plastic clamshells or bags are squeaky clean. But our recent tests found room for improvement.
Whether the greens came in a clamshell or bag, included "baby" greens, or were organic made no difference in bacteria levels. Photo credit: rutio Flickr photostream
No, we didn’t find pathogens such as E. coli O157:H7, listeria, or salmonella. With our small sample size—208 containers representing 16 brands purchased at stores in Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York—we didn’t expect to. (The Department of Agriculture, in a test of more than 4,000 samples of loose and packaged salad in 2008, found salmonella in two of them. All of our tests included packaged greens.)
But in our samples, all of which were within their use-by date, we did find bacteria that are common indicators of poor sanitation and fecal contamination—in some cases, at rather high levels.
Click to read the rest of the Consumer Reports story on contaminated bagged salad greens. Read Civil Eats blog take on the story.
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