The Laboratory That Infects Salad With Deadly Pathogens
Produce Flume A full production-scale fresh produce flume and processing system, installed in the IIT IFSH Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) biocontainment facility, allows researchers and industry to study how high-power ultrasound technology could help improve the washes employed to clean leafy greens. Institute for Food Safety and Health, Illinois Institute of TechnologyTroubleshooting the contamination of greens Deep in the Illinois Institute of Technology is a Biosafety Level 3 certified containment unit: one of the only places in the country that intentionally infects spinach with live, potentially deadly E. coli pathogens. Lab workers don moon suits, step through an airlock, and then send 500 pounds of salad splashing down a flume with 5,000 gallons of contaminated water. Since growers in Salinas work with more mesclun than scientists can fit in a 500 ml beaker, the future of food safety can't realistically be tested in a beaker. "When you scale...