An E Coli contamination linked to lettuce
has now spread here to California.
An e coli outbreak linked to baby spinach.
And that outbreak of the stomach bug known as cyclospora.
In the 2000,
fresh produce emerged as a huge vehicle of outbreak.
And nobody thought that, you know,
people will be becoming sick from eating salads.
So all this was new to the food industry.
This warning does keep expanding.
It's getting bigger and bigger and what the CDC is saying
tonight is that you not eat any kind of romaine lettuce.
It is really important to have appropriate
decontamination measures for these salad vegetables.
And that is why the work we do in our lab
with all these natural plant based
decontamination measures is really important.
Hi Elizabeth.
Hi, Doctor.
So, how's it going?
So, what are you guys doing now?
So we just finished sample 33.
I'm Sadhana Ravishankar
I am a professor at the School of Animal
and Comparative
Biomedical Sciences at the University of Arizona.
My expertize is in food safety, and in our lab we are focusing
everything based on a farm to fork approach.
So some of the studies we are doing are looking at
what are the cross-contamination potential
of environmental matrices such as soil and dust, as well
as irrigation water
onto the edible portion of the crop,
simulating the conditions that can occur in a field
in a laboratory condition.
We are looking at how these different bacteria attach
on the surface of various fresh produce, such as, you know,
cantaloupe versus a honeydew melon versus leafy greens.
You're just starting today right?
And did you clean all these coupons already?
Yes, So I have all the clean coupons here.
We do some pre harvest studies in the lab
in which we have to apply our treatments from.
The plants are growing, for example.
So we do grow leafy greens and we do the treatments
at different stages.
And on the post-harvest side we are looking at
how to decontaminate produce commodities such as leafy
greens, melons using plant based anti-microbial washes.
And then we are also using anti-microbial edible films
as either a wrap or as an ingredient
going into salad bags for their decontamination
potential against foodborne pathogenic bacteria.
[Inspirational music]
So I was awarded the inventor of the year
and I was chosen by the tech launch Arizona.
And I like being an entrepreneur.
And I would say that's not that easy
because I have to wear several hats in a day.
And I think because of my passion, I'm able to multitask
and I'm able to do whatever it needs to be done,
both as a professor, as an administrator,
as a teacher, and also as an entrepreneur.
So, you know,
being in the food safety field and understanding
how pathogens survive
in the food products and, you know,
what are the points of contamination.
When I make my own salad, I have to make it.
I will not eat salad made by anybody else.
And I know my
my family knows that because what
I feed to my family, for me, you know,
nobody should be getting sick
from foodborne illness in my house.
As a researcher and as a scientist,
what I believe is I should be doing research
that could be put to good use for the community.
So it should have an impact in the society.
And that is the reason I chose this career,
because food is something that everybody loves, everybody eats.
And we want to produce a safe food.
[Inspirational music]