Risks and recommendations regarding human pathogens in organic vegetable production chains

A continuous rise in the number of outbreaks of human diseases associated with the consumption of contaminated vegetables has been reported during the last few years. In most of these cases faecal bacteria like Escherichia coli O175:H7, Salmonella enterica, Campylobacter ssp., Listeria monocytogenes and Staphylococcus aureus were involved.
The European PathOrganic project addresses the quality and microbiological safety of organic vegetable production chains. To this purpose institutes from Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Switzerland work together in a close cooperation.
A questionnaire with organic farmers and farming cooperations will be conducted, to gain a closer insight in current farming practices, like fertilisation and in the quality and quantity of the produced vegetables. Afterwards samples will be taken from organic and conventional farms in the different countries. These samples will be analysed using classical selective cultivation as well as modern molecular biological methods. By these means it will be determined, at which point of time a microbial contamination of vegetables might occur during the production chain, and how to avoid these contaminations.
All results will be finally compiled and presented to scientists as well as interested vegetable producers and representatives of associations in a workshop. A PathOrganic website will be set up to provide information about organic vegetable production and the prevention of contaminations to interested users. This should contribute to minimizing the risk of exposure to pathogenic microorganisms for consumers.