24 4.4: Illness and the food employee
4.4 Illness and the food employee
Equally as important as practicing good personal hygiene is making sure food employees are healthy and well before working with food. A sick food employee puts not only their coworkers at risk, but also customers who consume food handled by them.
The operation’s management team should make sure all food employees are aware of the policy on reporting illness. To ensure the health of the whole operation, the staff must know what symptoms and illnesses should be reported and to whom. From there, the management team can decide if the food employee should be restricted from working with food or if the food employee should be excluded from the operation altogether. For example, restricting a food employee would be to allow them to work in the office area inputting invoices for accounting. The food employee can be in the operation, but he or she is restricted from the food preparation area and their new duties does not involve handling food. A food employee with Hepatitis A for example would be excluded or not allowed in the operation at all. This employee could not work in any capacity and would need to be medically cleared to return to work. Ideally, the food employee would contact the management team before coming to work if they are ill to eliminate the possible spread of the illness.
The person in charge should be on the lookout for personnel exhibiting common symptoms associated with communicable illnesses like vomiting, jaundice which is yellowing skin and or eyes due to high levels of bilirubin, chills & cold sweats which can be signs of fever, and frequent trips to the restroom as seen with diarrhea. Open wounds, sores or boils containing infectious pus should also be addressed by the person in charge.Some illnesses are serious enough that the local regulatory agency will need to be contacted and medical clearance will need to be given before a food employee can return to work. See the chart below to see how management should address illnesses as they arise.
Please note that if you serve highly-susceptible populations, you may be excluded from the operation and required to have a written release from medical personnel, even if your illness doesn’t have to be reported.
Illness that is not foodborne
Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, Tuberculosis, and AIDS are spread through intimate contact or exchange of bodily fluids, but these illnesses are not foodborne. Operation managers should familiarize themselves with the laws pertaining to personnel as it relates to these illnesses and their civil rights that are protected through the Americans with Disabilities Act. Food employees with these illnesses are not allowed to be fired or transferred from jobs working with food based upon having the disease. Managers must also maintain confidentiality of personnel illness.