Every year, 2-3 wild vertebrates are found in bagged salads bought from the store. It’s a rare but unpleasant “free gift” that comes with the purchase of prepackaged, ready to eat, leafy greens. In total, there have been reports of 40 incidents that occurred between 2003 and 2018 in which various news outlets posted stories of frogs, lizards, bats, and even rats and birds being found in people’s salad.
Seeing as there was no official compilation of reports made regarding people finding critters in their consumer-grade prepacked produce, a research associate, Daniel Hughes, with the Department of Animal Sciences at the University of Illinois, decided to conduct a review to see just how many wild creatures have been found in salads over a 15 year period. The study used data from the internet by reviewing media from national news in Google and Bing searches.
Hughes and his team found dozens of reports about consumers opening bags or boxes of greens and finding an amphibian or a rodent nestled among the leaves – most of the time dead but a few times still alive. The majority of incidents involved conventionally grown produce, not organic but that could be just because there are much fewer (and smaller) organic farms.
In all, 30 of the 40 consumers profiled found amphibians and reptiles; including tree frogs, toads, lizards, and snakes. All but one frog and one toad (found in bags of pre-cut green beans) were discovered in bagged, boxed or pre-made salad greens. The other 10 cases involved six rodents, including three birds and one Brazilian free-tailed Bat that sparked a recall from Walmart. “These [the rodents] were all found dead and several of which were simply mutilated body parts,” the study reported. The study was published in Science of The Total Environment.
Here’s a table from the study cataloging the reports:
Why is this happening? In the late 1980s, prepackaged produce became a trend. So much so that bagged salad became a staple feature of supermarkets across the country. This skyrocketing popularity in fresh produce led to a drastic rise in demands. Therefore, crops that were traditionally hand-picked had to become automated – meaning picked in bulk by a machine.
The authors explained:
The increased automation of farming methods combined with heightened expectations for fresh produce year-round and the fact that crop fields are not sterile environments—despite some attempts to make them so—have set the backdrop for a unique human–wildlife interaction.
By “unique human-wildlife interaction” they mean customers finding wild animals in their bags of salad! The automated harvesting process along with agricultural land eating into natural habitats resulted in scenarios of agricultural collateral damage – people finding wildlife in their food.
It is still uncertain if these occurrences could cause a food or health safety issue. The authors wrote:
One might expect food-safety professionals to mount a serious response when these incidents occur given the genuine threat that wild animals can pose to human health through contaminated produce. However, incidents of extemporaneous wildlife found in prepackaged produce rarely receive such attention, perhaps because of the relatively low rates of pathogenic infections detected in certain animal groups.
In the end, the numbers might even be an underestimate because surely not all incidences go reported. The researchers believe that a formal documentation process of such incidents is needed in order to track occurrence and potential health and safety risks.
