The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released a new strategy to prevent outbreaks of human norovirus (NoV) and Hepatitus A virus (HAV) from both fresh and frozen berries. The strategy is a response to reported outbreaks in 2022 and 2023 linked to imported fresh and frozen berries, although no domestic enteric virus outbreaks have been reported in over 35 years. 

In 2023 a joint expert panel of Food and Agriculture Organizations of the United Nations and World Health Organization identified frozen berries contaminated with HAV and NoV as one of the virus-commodity pairs of “highest global public health burden” in its updated review of foodborne viruses and relevant food commodities of highest public health concern.

Using information gained from outbreak findings, historical data, consultations with food safety experts in industry and other interest holders, the FDA has established goals and strategies to help prevent future outbreaks linked to consuming fresh or frozen berries.

The key actions include:

• Promote high rates of compliance with FDA food safety requirements.
• Encourage the berry industry to identify and ensure consistent application of processes, or a combination of processes, which describe adequate berry pre- and post-harvest sanitary practices for domestic and global berry operations, including promoting the use of root cause analysis when failures are observed in food safety systems.
• Broaden scientific knowledge about the viability, persistence, detection, and mitigation of viruses in fresh and frozen berries, pre- and post-harvest environments, and agricultural water sources.
• Incentivize industry and governments to embrace the use of public health prevention measures through immunization programs to promote worker health.

The strategy also places a strong focus on research into detecting and characterizing enteric viruses in various sample types, as well as understanding the ecology of enteric viruses in berry and other fresh produce operations. 

“Collaboration between regulators, the global berry industry, and other interest holders has been critical for the development of this strategy. We look forward to on-going collaboration with all interest holders to ensure the success of this strategy, and others, for the prevention of foodborne illness," stated Conrad Choiniere, Director of the Office of Microbiological Food Safety at the FDA’s Human Food Program (HFP).