FDA Releases Report on Coordinated Inspections and Sampling at Leafy Greens Farms in the Salinas Valley, CA
Constituent Update
February 21, 2024
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released a report on focused inspections, conducted by the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), and sampling, conducted by the FDA, at farms growing leafy greens in the Salinas Valley, CA, during the region’s 2022 harvest season. This joint effort focused on 14 farms that had been potentially linked to outbreaks of foodborne illness during traceback investigations in 2020 and 2021. This surveillance effort and the related follow-up actions prevented contaminated leafy greens from entering commerce but did not find additional evidence to link any specific farms to the foodborne illness outbreaks in 2020 and 2021.
This joint effort by FDA and CDFA was initiated in the summer of 2022 and ran through early fall. During this time, CDFA conducted inspections at nine of the 14 farms; the other five farms were not inspected because they were not conducting activities covered by the Produce Safety Rule on leafy greens at the time. The FDA sampled at all 14 farms. Overall, CDFA classified six inspectional outcomes as “voluntary action indicated” (VAI), and the FDA detected Salmonella Enteritidis in one sample of romaine lettuce. That farm did not harvest the crop from the area of the field where the Salmonella-positive sample was identified. In addition, all farms that received VAI inspectional outcomes took appropriate corrective actions following their inspections.
These results add to the evidence that sources and routes of pathogenic contamination on leafy greens are very difficult to discern and that sampling and retrospective investigations, alone, are not sufficient to glean the root causes of outbreaks linked to leafy greens. The FDA will continue to explore new ways to investigate the root causes of outbreaks linked to leafy greens as part of the Leafy Greens STEC Action Plan and will continue its work with industry, academia and state regulators to prevent outbreaks and strengthen the safety of leafy greens.