MSU Extension Agrifood Safety

Allissa Conley, Produce Safety Technician

Like the Boogeyman that is hiding under the bed, bacteria can lay in the dark, hidden on surfaces that are not sanitized, waiting to get you sick.

From a young age, the tale of the Boogeyman has been used to scare kids into practicing good behaviors. The Boogeyman is known to be a scary figure who cannot be seen but hides under the bed waiting for his prey.

Bacteria can be described as a Boogeyman of the produce safety world because of its scary nature and not being visible to the naked eye. Pathogens are the biggest food safety hazards in fresh produce, with bacteria being one of them. Bacteria includes the pathogens E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella, and Listeria monocytogenes. Unlike some other pathogens, bacteria can live and grow both inside of you as a host, as well as outside in the environment like on your produce or on surfaces in the packinghouse.

Another reason bacteria are scary is because of how quickly they can grow. Some pathogens can make people sick with 10 cells and bacteria can double in size every 20 minutes, meaning 10 bacteria can turn into over 167 million in an 8-hour timespan!

The best way to combat these pesky bacteria is to have proper food safety practices in place on the farm. One important food safety practice is having a proper cleaning and sanitizing procedure for anything coming into contact with produce. Surfaces must first be cleaned; this refers to the physical removal of dirt. This can be done by first removing dirt with some kind of brush, rinsing with water, then followed up by using an appropriate detergent and another rinsing step. Once the surface is cleaned, following up with a proper sanitizer as the last step is going to be the part of the process that will greatly decrease the number of bacteria and other pathogens present on surfaces that are coming into contact with produce.

So, let’s start thinking of bacteria as the Boogeyman under the spray table, just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean that it’s not there. If we think of it as always something hiding in wait to harm us, we will be more likely to keep up on our cleaning and sanitizing schedules.