Article Decontamination of ready to eat Japanese mustard green from Escherichia coli using slightly acidic electrolyzed water

DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION

The health benefits associated with fresh fruits and vegetables, combined with the ongoing consumer trend toward eating out and consuming ready-to-eat (RTE) fruits and vegetables, have contributed to a substantial increase in the popularity of ready-to-eat vegetables. RTE vegetables are those vegetables which have not been cooked and will not undergo cooking before consumption. Concomitant with this trend, an increased number of microbial infections associated with the consumption of fresh RTE fruit and vegetables have been documented in recent years, for example in Japan (Gutierrez, 1997), USA (FDA, 2006), England and Wales (PHLS, 2000), and Europe (Pezzoli et al., 2007).

The RTE can easily be contaminated from farm manure used as fertilizer (IFST, 1999) and plant workers