Application of Environmental Monitoring Programs and Root Cause Analysis to Identify and Implement Interventions to Reduce or Eliminate Listeria Populations in Apple Packinghouses

Abstract

Controlling Listeria in produce packinghouses can be challenging due to the large number of potential contamination routes. For example, repeated isolation of the same Listeria subtype in a packinghouse could indicate persistence in the packinghouse or reintroduction of the same Listeria from an upstream source. To improve understanding of Listeria transmission patterns in packinghouses, we performed a longitudinal study in four apple packinghouses, including testing of 1,339 environmental sponges and whole genome sequencing (WGS)-based characterization of 280 isolates. Root cause analysis and subsequent intervention implementation were also performed and assessed for effectiveness. Listeria prevalence among environmental sponges collected from the four packinghouses was 20% (range of 5–31% for individual packinghouses). Sites that showed high Listeria prevalence included drains, forklift tires and forks, forklift stops, and waxing area equipment frames. A total of 240/280 WGS-characterized isolates were represented in 41 clusters, each containing two or more isolates that differed by ≤50 high-quality single nucleotide polymorphisms (hqSNPs); 21 clusters were isolated from one packinghouse over ≥2 samplings (suggesting persistence or possibly reintroduction), while 11 clusters included isolates from >2 packinghouses, suggesting common upstream sources. Some interventions successfully (i) reduced Listeria detection on forklift tires and forks (across packinghouses) and (ii) mitigated packinghouse-specific Listeria issues (e.g., in catch pans). However, interventions that lacked enhanced equipment disassembly when persistence was suspected typically appeared to be unsuccessful. Overall, while our data suggest a combination of intensive environmental sampling with subtyping and root cause analysis can help identify effective interventions, implementation of effective interventions continues to be a challenge in packinghouses.