An employee arranges food on plates in the kitchen of a New York restaurant on Dec. 14, 2021. Food workers who showed up sick or contagious were linked to about 40% of food poisoning outbreaks in restaurants with a known cause between 2017 and 2019, federal health officials said Tuesday, May 30, 2023. Credit: AP Photo/Brittainy Newman, File
Food workers who showed up sick or contagious were linked to about 40% of food poisoning outbreaks in restaurants with a known cause between 2017 and 2019, federal health officials said Tuesday.
Norovirus and salmonella, germs that can cause serious illness, were the most common cause of 800 outbreaks, affecting 875 restaurants and reported by 25 state and local health departments.
Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called for better enforcement of “comprehensive food safety policies,” which emphasize basic measures such as hand washing and keeping sick employees off work.
While 85% of restaurants said they had policies prohibiting staff from working while sick, only about 16% of policies were detailed enough to require employees to notify managers and stay home if they experience any of the following: had the five main symptoms, including vomiting, diarrhea, and sore throat with fever.
About 44% of managers told the CDC that their restaurants provided paid sick leave to employees. That’s a problem, according to Mitzi Baum, the CEO of STOP Foodborne Illness, a nonprofit advocacy group.
She said it means workers are forced to choose between making money or showing up sick — or there is social pressure not to let colleagues down.
“If there’s a positive food safety culture, you don’t get penalized for illness,” Baum said.
It can be hard for consumers to know when sick employees are working, she said, but there are some signs they should look for: “Is your server snooping? Are they sneezing? How are they handling the utensils? ”
According to the CDC, about 48 million people a year in the U.S. get sick from foodborne illness, including 128,000 who are hospitalized and 3,000 who die.
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