Public health risk due to contamination of Solanum nigrum in frozen green beans – collaboration effort between a poison centre, a hospital and health authorities

Abstract

Introduction

We describe a rare food contamination of organically grown frozen green beans with Solanum nigrum, also called black night shade, which were widely available in supermarkets in the Netherlands.

Case series

To our knowledge, only three adults and one child were referred to the emergency department for observation after eating the contaminated green beans. Only minor symptoms were seen during observation. The remainder of the frozen green beans were obtained from the patients and sent for analysis within one day. Within two and a half days after the first case, a public safety warning and recall were launched.

Discussion

Due to an increase in popularity of organic food, more incidents involving toxic weed contaminants like the one we describe in this report could happen when quality control in organic agriculture is insufficient. In this event, the critical control point obtained from the hazard analysis was insufficiently managed by the producer.

Conclusion

This report demonstrates the efficient collaboration between the Dutch Poisons Information Centre, treating physicians at the hospital and the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority in case of a possible public safety issue. Because of quick acting and collaboration between the involved parties, the product was quickly withdrawn from the market.

Keywords:

• Food contamination
• Solanum nigrum
• public safety
• poison centre
• recall
• product safety

Acknowledgements

The authors like to thank the technicians from the laboratory of The Netherlands Institute for Vectors, Invasive plants and Plant health for their quick and efficient analysis of the sample.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflict of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Data availability statement

The participants of this study did not give written consent for their personal data to be shared publicly, so due to the sensitive nature of the research supporting data are not available.

Additional information

Funding

The authors reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.