Marcella La Cioppa The FDA has developed a new strategy to prevent contamination of fresh and frozen berries with viruses such as hepatitis A and norovirus.
Fresh and frozen berries can carry bacterial contamination, which is why the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has introduced a new strategy to prevent outbreaks.
This approach is for both domestically grown and imported berries and has been developed in consultation with the industry. According to the FDA, though no nationwide outbreaks of enteric viruses associated with domestic berries have been reported in the past 35 years, outbreaks have been linked to imported fresh and frozen berries.
The most recent hepatitis A outbreaks linked to strawberries occurred in 2022 and 2023, when imported berries from the same grower were identified as the source.
In 2023, a joint expert panel from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization identified frozen berries contaminated with hepatitis A and norovirus as one of the virus-product pairs with the “highest global public health burden.”
The new prevention strategy
The new prevention strategy describes steps that can be taken to prevent contamination of berries with enteric viruses. It summarizes actions FDA, industry, and others should take in order to ensure that communication of accurate information and consistent implementation of effective preventive measures occurs timely around the globe within the berry industry.
In issuing this new prevention strategy, FDA hopes to:
- Increase high compliance rates with FDA food safety regulations.
- Encourage the berry industry to identify and consistently implement processes or a combination of processes which establish proper pre- and post-harvest sanitary practices.
- Expand scientific knowledge on the viability, persistence, detection and mitigation of viruses in fresh and frozen berries, pre- and post-harvest environments, and agricultural water sources.
- Encourage industry and governments to adopt public health prevention measures through immunization programs to promote worker health.
According to the FDA, this new prevention strategy addresses significant knowledge gaps and fosters scientific research to enhance detection and characterization of enteric viruses in a range of sample types, as well as link contamination sources using state-of-the-art laboratory methods.
Source: World Health Organization
