Assessing Employee Health Policies for Reporting and Excluding Ill Food Employees in Restaurants within the United States

Preventing ill food employees from spreading pathogens to food and food contact surfaces remains an important objective of retail food safety policy in the United States. Since 2005, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recommended food establishments implement employee health policies th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of food protection Vol. 84; no. 2; pp. 291 - 295
Main Authors Liggans, Girvin L, Boyer, Marc S, Moore, Veronica S, Williams, Laurie B
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Elsevier Limited 01.02.2021
Subjects
Data collection
Disease transmission
Employees
Epidemics
Fast food
Fever
Food contamination & poisoning
Food Handling
Food Safety
Foodborne Diseases
Health policy
Humans
Illnesses
Management systems
Occupational Health
Policies
Restaurants
Risk factors
Safety management
Salmonella
Signs and symptoms
United States
United States
United States > US
Ill food employee
FDA Food Code
Restaurants
Employee health
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Summary:Preventing ill food employees from spreading pathogens to food and food contact surfaces remains an important objective of retail food safety policy in the United States. Since 2005, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recommended food establishments implement employee health policies that include requirements for the exclusion or restriction of ill food employees and reporting, to the person in charge, symptoms or diagnosis of certain diseases transmitted by food. However, the incorporation of this recommendation has not been widely studied. The purpose of this exploratory study was to assess the presence and prevalence of employee health policies at fast-food and full-service restaurants in the United States. More than 50% of fast-food and full-service restaurants were found to have nonexistent employee health policies for each of the five recommended components specified in the FDA Food Code. Results showed 17.41% of fast-food restaurants and 12.88% of full-service restaurants had all five recommended components. Moreover, most restaurants with all five recommended employee health policy components were part of a multiple-unit operation and were found to have more developed food safety management systems than restaurants with none of the recommended components. Further attention and research into the impediments associated with developing and implementing employee health policies in restaurants is warranted.
ISSN:0362-028X
1944-9097
DOI:10.4315/JFP-20-158