{"id":1593,"date":"2024-01-03T09:27:09","date_gmt":"2024-01-03T14:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ag.purdue.edu\/food-safety-innovation-lab\/?p=1593"},"modified":"2025-07-30T11:47:41","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T15:47:41","slug":"bridging-food-safety-gaps-in-cambodia-navin-sreng","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ag.purdue.edu\/food-safety-innovation-lab\/bridging-food-safety-gaps-in-cambodia-navin-sreng\/","title":{"rendered":"Bridging Food Safety Gaps in Cambodia: Navin Sreng, Institut Pasteur du Cambodge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Upon returning to Cambodia in 2016 after four years abroad,\u00a0Navin Sreng<\/a>\u00a0found herself at an unexpected crossroads in her scientific career. She had a newly minted Ph.D. in biology in hand from France\u2019s prestigious\u00a0Paul Sabatier University<\/a>, where she attended on full scholarship, and had her sights set on a faculty position back home.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe scholarship had a requirement that when I finish my studies, I come back to help my home country,\u201d says Sreng, who grew up in Phnom Penh to a middle-class family. \u201cAnd when I was in France, I was close to a Cambodian lecturer who advised me that I should work for a university.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, the only employment the university could offer at the time was a part-time teaching position \u2014 in fact, the exact same one she had before leaving for France. Despite being overqualified, Sreng took the job, assuming the school would find a more suitable position for her soon enough. She waited for months, hoping the situation would change.<\/p>\n

When the promotion never came, Sreng decided to leave academic research for the private sector. She took a chance by applying to the\u00a0Institut Pasteur du Cambodge<\/a>, part of the famed\u00a0Pasteur Institute\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0international network of health centers. Institut Pasteur du Cambodge operates under the auspices of both the\u00a0Cambodian Ministry of Health\u00a0and the Institut Pasteur. Her prior work on type 2 diabetes didn\u2019t quite overlap with the institute\u2019s focus on infectious diseases, but after a brief internship in bacteriology, she secured a job as a staff scientist in 2017.<\/p>\n

Today, Sreng serves as the head of the\u00a0Laboratory of Environment and Food Safety (LEFS)<\/a>\u00a0at the Institut Pasteur du Cambodge. The mission of LEFS is to assist food operators across the food system to detect, control and prevent foodborne illnesses and to provide quality and healthy foods. The laboratory performs a wide range of analyses, including food microbiology testing, microbiology and chemical testing for different types of water, air contamination testing, and surface contact testing.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy task is to manage the laboratory and push us in the right direction to reach a particular vision,\u201d she says. \u201cLast year, we became accredited by the International Accreditation Service as proof of the technical competence and the commitment to continuous improvement of quality service of the laboratory and its staff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sreng is also involved with LEFS\u2019 research projects, including one funded by the\u00a0FSIL. The lab is one of 20 such labs in a network under\u00a0Feed the Future, the U.S. government\u2019s global hunger and food security initiative led by\u00a0USAID<\/a>. The FSIL\u00a0project, titled \u201cReducing Foodborne Pathogen Contamination of Vegetables in Cambodia: Innovative Research, Targeted Interventions, and Impactful, Cambodian-led Engagement<\/a>,\u201d is targeting food safety gaps in the production, distribution and sale of vegetables in Cambodia.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe purpose of the project is to investigate the contamination rate of bacteria \u2014 especially E. coli<\/em> and Salmonella<\/em> \u2014 in fresh vegetables like lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers,\u201d Sreng says. \u201cWe want to see where exactly the contamination takes place, from farm to market.\u201d<\/p>\n

In recent years, both the Cambodian government and international development organizations have taken steps to reduce malnutrition by implementing policies and programs, including those designed to increase local production and consumption of vegetables. However, produce must be protected from cross-contamination with pathogens during all stages \u2014 production, processing, transport, sale and meal preparation \u2014 to lower the risk of foodborne illness.<\/p>\n

The project brings together an interdisciplinary team of researchers from both the United States and Cambodia. Sreng collaborates with lead researchers Jessie Vipham of\u00a0Kansas State University and Paul Ebner of\u00a0Purdue University, as well as colleagues based in her home country at the\u00a0Center of Excellence on Sustainable Agricultural Intensification and Nutrition,\u00a0Royal University of Agriculture,\u00a0Institute of Technology Cambodia, and the\u00a0World Vegetable Center<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The researchers collected samples of different vegetables from farms, distribution centers, wholesale markets and retail markets in two provinces: Battambang and Siem Reap. Sreng and her colleagues at LEFS then analyzed the Siem Reap samples to identify the critical control points for foodborne illness. Next, they plan to evaluate new and existing interventions to reduce microbial contamination at these critical control points in the vegetable value chain.<\/p>\n

Sreng hopes that the FSIL project will accelerate the adoption of food safety in Cambodia and promote greater awareness of food safety risks among stakeholders such as farmers, produce collectors, market vendors and consumers. And even though she ended up in the private sector and not academia, Sreng wholeheartedly believes she landed in the right place.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the food safety training that I do, I can share all the knowledge that I have with people and alert them to the problem of foodborne illness,\u201d says Sreng. \u201cI think this could help make a difference \u2014 maybe not to the whole country, but at least to the people who I meet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meeri Kim is a freelance writer with the\u00a0<\/em>Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Safety.<\/em><\/a>\u00a0The Innovation Lab is one of a network of 20 such labs led by U.S. universities under\u00a0<\/em>Feed the Future<\/em>, the U.S. government\u2019s global hunger and food security initiative led by\u00a0<\/em>USAID<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Upon returning to Cambodia in 2016 after four years abroad,\u00a0Navin Sreng\u00a0found herself at an unexpected crossroads in her scientific career. She had a newly minted Ph.D. in biology in hand from France\u2019s prestigious\u00a0Paul Sabatier University, where she attended on full scholarship, and had her sights set on a faculty position back home. \u201cThe scholarship had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1592,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-profile"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ag.purdue.edu\/food-safety-innovation-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ag.purdue.edu\/food-safety-innovation-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ag.purdue.edu\/food-safety-innovation-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ag.purdue.edu\/food-safety-innovation-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ag.purdue.edu\/food-safety-innovation-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1593"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/ag.purdue.edu\/food-safety-innovation-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2504,"href":"https:\/\/ag.purdue.edu\/food-safety-innovation-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593\/revisions\/2504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ag.purdue.edu\/food-safety-innovation-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ag.purdue.edu\/food-safety-innovation-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ag.purdue.edu\/food-safety-innovation-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}