EFFICACY OF SANITIZATION PROTOCOLS IN REMOVING PARASITES IN VEGETABLES: A PROTOCOL FOR A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW WITH META-ANALYSIS
Food safety, food parasitology and food hygiene
Parasitic contamination in vegetables is a reality in several countries and a challenge for food safety. They are products susceptible to several failures in the good practices of production, transport, packaging, and preparation, which added to the consumption, usually raw, further increases the risk of ingestion of contaminated food. Therefore, a systematic review was carried out to scientifically evidence the effectiveness of sanitization protocols in the parasitic decontamination of vegetables. This review was conducted by fo=in accordance with the guidelines of the Cochrane Manual, being recorded in the PROSPERO protocol database (CRD42020206929) and reported according to the PRISMA 2020 statement, complying with the criteria of transparency, reproducibility, and impartiality in the synthesis of evidence. The review evaluated studies published in MEDLINE, Embase, Web of Science, FSTA, LILACS, and AGRIS databases, as well as manual searches in related articles, references, and directories of theses and dissertations. The meta-analysis was performed using the Revman 5 software and the bias assessment used the Robins I Tools tool with some adaptations. In addition, the quality of evidence was rated by GRADE. The review had a total of 31 studies included, most of which were carried out in countries with a high incidence of parasites in vegetables, such as Brazil and Iran. Interventions combined with chlorination of 200ppm preceded by brushing or immersion in detergent showed the greatest effectiveness in parasite decontamination, low cost of cleaning, and an average time of 20 minutes for the procedure. The heterogeneities, inaccuracies, and risk of bias of the primary studies implied a lower strength of recommendation on outcomes. However, this review can inspire the planning of new studies that observe the critical and methodological evaluation for research in the area of food safety.