As part of the agency’s Leafy Greens STEC Action Plan, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has published a report detailing the results of targeted inspections and microbiological testing of leafy greens grown in Salinas Valley, California during the region’s 2022 harvest season. The inspections, carried out by the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), and the sampling, done by FDA, included 14 farms that had been potentially linked to unresolved outbreaks of foodborne illness during traceback investigations in 2020 and 2021.
The aims of the inspections and testing were to identify potential contamination of leafy greens and to prevent contaminated or potentially contaminated product from entering commerce. The surveillance effort and related follow-up actions did prevent 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.