A project funded by Center for Produce Safety (CPS). Renewable for up to three years.

The produce industry needs a model to (i) identify the most important risks in a supply chain and (ii) identify which practices and control strategies appropriately reduce risks of contamination events that could lead to product recalls and illness outbreaks. This could mean which pathogen is most important for a commodity, or which practice represents the largest risk for a given supply chain.

We do this by:

• Modelling the risk in a supply chain for leafy greens contaminated by two important pathogens, either Shiga toxin–producing Escherichia coli or Listeria monocytogenes.
• Expanding the model to accommodate additional pathogens, practices, and commodities to assess the impact of newly identified risks such as newly identified problematic practices, emerging pathogens, or products. 
• Measuring the impact of newly identified risks or newly modeled control strategies on how they change the total supply chain risk as compared to the risk uncontrolled by current practices.