<p>Understanding the causes and contributing factors leading to outbreaks of food-borne illness associated with contamination of fresh produce is a worldwide challenge for everyone from the growers of fresh-cut produce through the entire production and delivery process. The premise of <i>The Produce Contamination Problem</i> is that when human pathogen contamination of fresh produce occurs, it is extremely difficult to reduce pathogen levels sufficiently to assure microbiological safety with the currently available technologies. A wiser strategy would be to avoid crop production conditions that result in microbial contamination to start.</p> <p>These critical, problem-oriented chapters have been written by researchers active in the areas of food safety and microbial contamination during production, harvesting, packing and fresh-cut processing of horticultural crops, and were designed to provide methods of contamination avoidance. Coverage includes policy and practices in the United States, Mexico and Central America, Europe, and Japan.</p><ul><li>Addresses food-borne contaminations from a prevention view, providing proactive solutions to the problems</li><li>Covers core sources of contamination and methods for identifying those sources</li><li>Includes best practice and regulatory information</li></ul>