Every year millions of people are affected and thousands of them die due to infections and intoxication as a result of foodborne outbreaks, which also cause billions of dollars' worth of damage, public health problems, and agricultural product loss. A considerable portion of these outbreaks is related to fresh produce and caused by foodborne pathogens on fresh produce and mycotoxins. Escherichia coli O104:H4 outbreak, occurred in Germany in 2011, has attracted a great attention on foodborne outbreaks caused by contaminated fresh produce, and especially the vulnerability and gaps in the early warning and notification networks in the surveillance systems in all around the world. In the frame of this paper, we reviewed the most common foodborne pathogens on fresh produce, traceback investigations of the outbreaks caused by these pathogens, and lastly international early warning and notification systems, including PulseNet International and Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed, aiming to detect foodborne outbreaks.

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The phylogeny, identification, and characterization of 33 B. cereus sensu lato isolates originating from 17 agricultural soils from 11 countries were analyzed on the basis of whole genome sequencing. Phylogenetic analyses revealed all isolates are divided into six groups, which follows the generally accepted phylogenetic division of B. cereus sensu lato isolates. Four different identification methods resulted in a variation in the identity of the isolates, as none of the isolates were identified as the same species by all four methods—only the recent identification method proposed directly reflected the phylogeny of the isolates. This points to the importance of describing the basis and method used for the identification. The presence and percent identity of the protein product of 19 genes potentially involved in pathogenicity divided the 33 isolates into groups corresponding to phylogenetic division of the isolates. This suggests that different pathotypes exist and that it is possible to differentiate between them by comparing the percent identity of proteins potentially involved in pathogenicity. This also reveals that a basic link between phylogeny and pathogenicity is likely to exist. The geographical distribution of the isolates is not random: they are distributed in relation to their division into the six phylogenetic groups, which again relates to different ecotypes with different temperature growth ranges. This means that we find it easier to analyze and understand the results obtained from the 33 B. cereus sensu lato isolates in a phylogenetic, patho-type and ecotype-oriented context, than in a context based on uncertain identification at the species level.

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