How can frozen fruit be contaminated with bad bacteria?

Question

I was just remembering some recalls somewhat recently of big bags of frozen fruit in stores like costco. And i was wondering, how can any bad bacteria survive the freezing long enough to make people sick by the time they buy and eat the fruit? Shouldn’t the freezing process kill practically everything?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Freezing doesn’t kill everything, and even if it did many dangerous bacteria produce toxins which are not destroyed by freezing. If they produced enough toxins before freezing it would make you sick even if the bacteria are dead.