According to a study funded by the Food Standards Agency, more than one in 20 lettuces sold in the UK are contaminated with the potentially deadly bug norovirus.
Of 568 samples of lettuce, 30 (5.3%) were Norovirus-positive. Most (24 out of 30) lettuce samples which tested positive for Norovirus were grown in the UK and 19 of those 24 samples contained NoV GI.
The study also found that 2.3% of fresh raspberry and 3.6% of frozen raspberry were norovirus-positive.
6 out of 7 of the positively-testing raspberries were important but no predominance of a genogroup or any seasonality was observed.
The NoVAS study which began in January 2014 aims to determine how much norovirus in the UK is transmitted through contaminated foods, what the role of infected food handlers in transmission is and whether or not it is possible to differentiate between infectious and non-infectious norovirus in a variety of food matrices.