On the 30th of May, 2023 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released alarming information regarding food poisoning cases, restaurant employees, and their close connection. According to this report, 40% of food poisoning outbreaks are tied to restaurant workers; whether by working with food while sick or by failing to follow standard hygienic practices.
While this statistic is unnerving, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) gave reason for hope: titling the report “Restaurants Can Manage Sick Workers To Help Prevent Outbreaks;” and listing the following as recommendations for restaurants to consider in order to decrease the number of restaurant employee-caused food poisoning outbreaks:
(1)create or strengthen written policies that require food workers to tell managers when they are sick, including which symptoms should keep workers from working;
(2) address the reasons why managers and workers work when sick;
(3) take a proactive role in deciding whether sick workers should work; and
(4) create schedules that ease the pressure for workers to work when they are sick.
While these may be painstaking to implement, restaurants (and food manufacturers) should be intent upon improving the hygiene of their service workers and the health of their employees – both with the intended result of healthier customers.
CDC Looks Further – Why? A Closer Look at the “Holes” in “Sick Policies”
In accordance with EHS-Net, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigated restaurants and their illness management after the publication of the high percentage of sick employee-caused food poisoning outbreaks. Throughout the investigation, it was discovered that the symptoms of sore throat and jaundice were absent in most policies.
Additionally, it was found that every third policy failed to mention typical symptoms that should keep sick restaurant workers at home.
The investigation also asked workers for their motivation behind coming to work while under the weather – and the responses generally followed these sentiments:
(1) innate sense of duty to their job;
(2) misunderstanding of the danger of their illness;
(3) misunderstanding contagious factors; and
(4) the fear of losing work.
While sick workers have been confirmed to be linked to 40% of food poisoning cases, restaurants are fully capable of decreasing this percentage- while also dissolving employee’s fears and causes for coming to work sick, as listed above.
