FRESH EXPRESS FUNDS NINE INNOVATIVE
RESEARCH PROJECTS TOTALING
$2 MILLION TO STUDY E. COLI O157:H7 IN
LETTUCE AND LEAFY GREENS
Research Funding Reflects Company’s Ongoing Commitment to Food-Safety Leadership

SALINAS, CALIF. – April 12, 2007 – Fresh Express, the No. 1 producer of value-added salads in North America, today announced that nine research teams are being awarded up to $250,000 each to study the Escherichia coli O157:H7 pathogen to advance science-based practices to prevent its occurrence in fresh produce. Fresh Express is funding up to $2 million collectively in research under the guidance of an independent scientific advisory panel as a means to support industrywide food-safety solutions, even though Fresh Express products were not involved in the recent outbreak and never have been shown to have caused an outbreak of food-borne illness.

“The quality of the proposals was extraordinary,” said Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, Ph.D., M.P.H., director of the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy and the voluntary chairman of the Fresh Express Blue Ribbon Scientific Advisory Panel. “We were all extremely impressed by the innovative approaches and new directions being applied to E. coli O157:H7 research to better understand and ultimately minimize the threat of this pathogen in fresh produce.”

“We are grateful to the scientific panel for their intensive work and extremely pleased with the depth and scope of the nine research projects selected,” said Tanios E. Viviani, president of Fresh Express. “Fresh Express is committed to bringing healthy, safe products to consumers, and we plan to share any research findings as widely as possible to help stimulate the development of advanced safeguards within the fresh-cut industry.”

According to food safety and health authorities, much remains to be learned about how the E. coli O157:H7 strain responsible for last year’s fresh spinach and lettuce food-borne illness outbreaks contaminated those foods, making new research about this important pathogen and how to prevent its contamination in leafy greens and fresh produce critically important to consumers and the fresh produce industry.

One-year funding awards of up to $250,000 will be awarded to the following institutions and principal investigators:

• Subsurface contamination and internalization of E. coli O157:H7 in pre-harvest lettuce
Michael P. Doyle, Ph.D., Center for Food Safety, University of Georgia

• Movement of E. coli O157:H7 in spinach and dissemination to leafy greens by insects
Jacqueline Fletcher, Ph.D., Dept. of Entomology and Plant Pathology, Oklahoma State University

• Interaction of E. coli O157:H7 with fresh leafy green produce
Jorge A. Girón, Ph.D., Dept. of Immunobiology, University of Arizona

• Factors that influence the ability of E. coli O157:H7 to multiply on lettuce and leafy greens
Linda J. Harris, Ph.D., Western Institute for Food Safety and Security, University of California–Davis

• Fate of E. coli O157:H7 on fresh and fresh-cut iceberg lettuce and spinach in the presence of normal background microflora
Mark A. Harrison, Ph.D., Dept. of Food Science and Technology, University of Georgia

• Determining the environmental factors contributing to the extended survival or regrowth of food-borne pathogens in composting systems
Xiuping Jiang, Ph.D., Dept. of Food Science and Human Nutrition, Clemson University

• Quantifying the risk of transfer and internalization of E. coli O157:H7 during processing of leafy greens
Elliot T. Ryser, Ph.D., National Food Safety and Toxicology Center, Michigan State University

• A novel approach to investigate internalization of E. coli O157:H7 in lettuce and spinach
Manan Sharma, Ph.D., Food Technology and Safety Laboratory, Animal and Natural Resources Institute, USDA-Agricultural Research Service

• Sanitization of leafy vegetables by integrating gaseous ozone treatment into produce processes
Ahmed Yousef, Ph.D., Dept. of Microbiology, Ohio State University

Made up of six nationally-recognized food safety experts from federal and state food safety-related agencies and academia, the all-voluntary independent Blue Ribbon Scientific Advisory Panel carefully deliberated the merits of each proposal against a rigorous set of criteria with corresponding point system from a total field of 65 before selecting the nine they considered to be the most innovative, most promising and most attuned to the panel’s research priorities.

Members of the panel, in addition to Dr. Osterholm, include Dr. Jeff Farrar, California Department of Health Services; Dr. Bob Buchanan, U.S. Food and Drug Administration; Dr. Robert Tauxe, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Dr. Bob Gravani, Cornell University and Dr. Craig Hedberg, University of Minnesota.
The five areas of needed research identified by the panel and outlined as a part of the request for proposal process included:

• The potential for the internalization of E. coli O157:H7 into lettuce tissue;
• Mitigation strategies and technologies;
• Environmental sources and vectors for contamination;
• Ability of E. coli O157:H7 to multiply in the presence of normal background flora; and,
• Ability of E. coli O157:H7 and other enteric pathogens to survive composting processes.

About Fresh Express
Fresh Express, the nation’s No.1 salad producer, is a subsidiary of Chiquita Brands International, Inc. (NYSE: CQB) and has been a leader in fresh foods for more than 80 years. Fresh Express is dedicated to providing consumers with healthy, convenient ready-to-eat spinach, salads, vegetables and fruits. With the invention of its special Keep Crisp™ bag beginning in the early 1980s, Fresh Express pioneered the now multi-billion dollar retail packaged salad category and was the first to make them available nationwide. For more information, visit www.freshexpress.com.

# # #