Each year in the United States, foodborne pathogens, including bacteria, viruses, and parasites, cause an estimated 48 million illnesses, 128,000 hospitalizations, and 3,000 deaths. Forty-six percent of those illnesses are attributed to fresh produce, with pathogens on leafy greens causing the most illnesses. Pathogen contamination in fresh foods is a threat to public health. Unfortunately, the microbiological testing of a few samples of whole fruits or even hundreds of spinach leaves is inadequate to ensure the safety of a batch of specialty crop produce. Similarly, microbiological testing of only a few milliliters from thousands of liters of irrigation water and wash water used to grow and process a batch of specialty crop produce is woefully inadequate. A revolutionary, non-clogging phage filter system has been developed to capture, concentrate and isolate small numbers of multiple pathogens (100 CFU) from large volumes of irrigation and wash water (1,000 liters <10 minutes), so that foodborne illnesses can be rapidly identified before food is distributed to consumers. To optimize the performance of the filter system, we investigated a broad-spectrum of parameters inclusive of sensor elements, filter configuration, flow velocity, fluid pressure and operation temperature that would contribute to the development of a better system. This project will benefit growers, processors and distributors by rapidly identifying contaminated irrigation water, contaminated lots of produce, and improving production efficiency while reducing recalls and litigation.