Thanks to a $500,000 grant from the USDA, Ohio State University scientists, together with their Canadian collaborators, are studying how Salmonella contaminates tomatoes and are exploring new ways to control the problem.
Until 1990, Salmonella was usually associated with chicken, eggs or other animal-based foods. But between 1990 and 2006, at least a dozen multistate outbreaks of salmonellosis were traced to tomatoes, accounting for an estimated 79,600 illnesses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Fresh produce-related foodborne illness outbreaks have increased 20-fold from the 1970s to the 2000s, and Salmonella accounts for nearly half of them, says Gireesh Rajashekara, principal investigator of the study and a food safety researcher at Ohio State’s Ohio AgriculturalResearch and Development Center. OARDC is the research arm of the university’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.
The three-year grant from the USDA's Agriculture and Food Search Initiative was awarded in September.
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