Picture this. You stopped at your local grocery store on the way home from work to pick up a few things for dinner, including a rotisserie chicken, a jar of dressing, and a bag of chopped romaine lettuce. Sometime after, you and your family are unexpectedly sick, and you imagine that chicken must have been undercooked. As it turns out, that bag of healthy, crisp lettuce was the culprit.
Large-scale outbreaks of contaminated leafy greens like spinach and romaine have made headlines in recent years, and some food safety experts are concerned that regulatory changes may actually make things more challenging for consumers. As of this February, there were two active investigations, including one linked to lettuce contaminated with E. coli that infected 88 people.
This was just one of many outbreaks last year that sickened a great number of people. According to the watchdog group U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund’s new report, “Food for Thought 2025.” But what is it about bagged lettuce that actually makes food safety experts concerned?
Why Bagged Salad Greens Are a Food Safety Risk
“Eating vegetables, including leafy greens, is an important part of a healthy, balanced diet, but food safety experts often avoid prepackaged salads, because they can be riskier than a whole head of lettuce,” explains Dr. Vanessa Coffman, director of the Alliance to Stop Foodborne Illness.
How could bagged or prepackaged salads pose more of a risk than a regular head of lettuce? Coffman likens it to ground meat, as “packaged greens are typically from multiple sources and processed together, which increases the chance that contamination from one batch is spread across many bags.” The actual cutting process could even trap and spread harmful pathogens.
In addition to the processing of precut or bagged lettuce mixes, the package itself could pose a risk, explains Dr. Darin Detwiler, associate teaching professor at Northeastern University College of Professional Studies, and author of Food Safety: Past, Present, and Predictions. He says moisture in packaging can “create an ideal environment for bacteria like E. coli, Listeria, and Salmonella.” Temperature changes during transport and storage can also allow pathogens to multiply.
How New Regulations Are Affecting the Safety of Bagged Salad Greens
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“Packaged lettuce, salad greens, and spinach are especially vulnerable to contamination due to multiple points of risk throughout the food supply chain,” Coffman explains. “Contamination can occur as early as the farm level. Fields may be exposed to harmful bacteria from nearby livestock operations, wild animals, workers, or contaminated irrigation water if proper food safety protocols aren’t strictly followed.”
Contaminated water from nearby livestock is often the source of outbreaks. Key regulatory changes to the Food and Drug Administration’s revised implementation timeline for the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) Produce Safety Rule, Subpart E, which addresses agricultural water standards, may impact such outbreaks. Detwiler explains that the updated rule places more of the onus on assessing water quality on farms and growers, rather than simply requiring strict microbial limits, such as the thresholds for E. coli.
While this shift aims to be more science-based and even adaptable to different farming practices, Detwiler notes, “some experts are concerned that looser timelines and risk-based assessments could lead to inconsistent on-farm monitoring, especially for crops like leafy greens, which are often consumed raw and are highly vulnerable to contamination.” In other words, the new rule provides greater flexibility but also more responsibility for growers.
He also adds, “From a food safety perspective, I am cautiously concerned. The move toward flexible, risk-based assessments places more responsibility on growers to identify and mitigate hazards, rather than following strict, measurable standards. While this might improve long-term practices on large, well-resourced farms, smaller operations or those under weak oversight may not adequately manage water quality, increasing the chance of contamination.”
Most recently, a deadly outbreak of contaminated romaine lettuce impacted 15 states last November, but the public wasn’t notified in a timely manner. “While the FDA did eventually issue a warning, the response lacked clarity and urgency,” Coffman recalls. “Consumers were told to ‘avoid romaine lettuce,’ without details about which brands, regions, or growers were affected—because the agency never publicly named the implicated firms.”
Coffman went on to state, “This kind of vagueness undermines consumer trust. We want people to feel confident choosing fresh produce, but when they can’t be sure what’s safe, it affects both home cooks and the broader food industry.”
The FDA has also experienced budget cuts and reduction in force, though it’s unclear at this time how this will impact food safety inspections.
“With the current administration’s reduction in force efforts, we know that huge numbers of agency communication staff have been let go,” Coffman explains. “At a time when transparent, accurate messaging can literally save lives, cutting the very people responsible for getting critical information to the public is deeply troubling.”
Safer Bagged Salad Greens To Buy
One important caveat to the potential for danger associated with bagged lettuces is indoor-grown greens. A spokesperson from Gotham Greens, a fresh food company operating sustainable greenhouses across the country, says that while no product can ever be completely isolated from risk, indoor-grown leafy greens have guardrails against contamination that’s not typically possible with many field-grown greens found in bagged lettuces.
These guardrails include farming in a controlled environment using hydroponic greenhouses. The greens are not exposed to things like agricultural runoff or animal waste, the water is filtered and treated as part of the growing method, and the company’s water monitoring program helps ensure the water is free of harmful pathogens.
Regular lab testing and monitoring to comply with FSMA requirements include regular sampling and testing of the water and physical environment.
“While there haven’t been regulatory rollbacks that inherently make bagged lettuce unsafe to eat, the way risks are assessed, communicated, and managed may look different than they have in the past,” explains Katie Sabatini, RD, LDN, and Food Safety & Quality Assurance expert at Little Leaf Farms, which produces green house grown lettuces.
The Bottom Line
These regulatory shifts may not make bagged lettuce inherently less safe, but “consumers should stay informed about where their greens are coming from and keep in mind that ‘pre-washed’ lettuce isn’t contamination-proof,” Sabatini says. “The majority of producers are deeply committed to food safety and there are strong systems in place to minimize risk.”
