Tokyo Food Safety Information Center » Tokyo Metropolitan Government food safety FAQ » There have been cases of food poisoning from homemade pickles; are pickles sold commercially safe?
There have been cases of food poisoning from homemade pickles; are pickles sold commercially safe?
There have been cases of food poisoning from homemade pickles; are pickles sold commercially safe?
- Are the vegetables used in commercially sold pickles always sterilized?
- Pickles keep for a long time; I didn’t think they could be a cause of food poisoning.
Commercially purchased pickles are safe as long as you store them according to the instructions on the label and eat them within the expiration date.
The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has revised the Hygiene Standards for Pickles, rules which govern the hygienic production of pickles, in order to prevent food poisoning caused by pickles, adding rules such as that vegetables must be stored and pickling must be conducted at low temperatures, as well as that vegetables must be sterilized with an antiseptic solution or via other means. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government takes thorough measures to inform pickle producing businesses of these hygiene management rules.
Vegetables are grown in soil and can get bacteria which cause food poisoning on them from the ground, fertilizer, and wild animals.
Old-fashioned Japanese-style pickles are called honzuke or furuzuke, and involve pickling vegetables with salt concentrations of around 10%, under which lactic acid bacteria and yeast multiply and induce fermentation. The high salt concentration and fermentation process prevents bacteria which cause food poisoning from multiplying, making it possible to store the pickles for a long time, from one month up to several months.
Conversely, asazuke lightly pickled pickles, popular in recent years, have a low salt concentration and are only somewhat fermented, which can allow food poisoning-inducing bacteria to continue to survive and multiply. These kinds of pickles do not keep long.
In addition, due to the demand for low-salt products for health reasons, both asazuke light pickles and honzuke/furuzuke traditional-style pickles are being made with less salt than ever before, shortening their shelf lives.
In 2012, a case of Enterohemorrhagic E. coli O157 food poisoning occurred which was caused by asazuke light pickles. In response to this incident, the Hygiene Standards for Pickles were revised in order to strengthen hygiene management for asazuke pickles.
In plants and large processing facilities which handle mass batch amounts of vegetables, the contamination of just some of the vegetables by bacteria which cause food poisoning can spread to the rest of the batch. Accordingly, the vegetables must now not only be washed but also sterilized.