The Food Standards Agency has just published an important document, ‘Food Handlers: Fitness to Work – A Practical Guide for Food Business Operators’. This guide has been produced for food businesses to help prevent the spread of infectious diseases through food. This FSA publication updates and replaces the 1995 Department of Health guidance. For the first time, the guidance applies to all UK food business operators except primary producers (e.g. farmers and growers).
Diarrhoea and vomiting can be easily transmitted through food and therefore staff with these symptoms must report it to their managers immediately. Managers should then exclude these staff from working with or around open food for 48 hours from when symptoms stop naturally. In effect this means that if a staff member has diarrhoea, they will need to wait 48 hours after the diarrhoea stops or if they are taking diarrhoea prevention tablets to ease the symptoms they would need to wait 48 hours after treatment has stopped.
There are some cases where different action is required, for example if a food handler has been diagnosed with Salmonella typhi, Verocytotoxin producing E.coli, Norovirus, Hepatitis A, Skin infections/sores, Amoebic Dysentery, Shigella, worms or Vibrio cholerae 01 and 0139. In these cases you should refer to the guidance for information on what to do.
The guidance also discusses circumstances when exclusion may not be needed for example when someone is suffering morning sickness through pregnancy, has a hangover or a non infective illness that can cause sickness and diarrhoea such as chrohns disease. However if there is any doubt as to cause then it is best to exclude the person.
The guidance also requires that all staff who handle food and who work around open food must always:
• wash and dry their hands before handling food, or surfaces likely to come into contact with food, especially after going to the toilet.
Everyone working in a food handling area must maintain a high degree of personal cleanliness. Hand washing is an essential part of this. Hands can easily pass bacteria and viruses around the kitchen if they are not washed thoroughly with soap and hot water. Drying hands safely, preferably using paper towels is also essential. The guidance provides advice on the use of hand gels which will only work on clean hands so should only be used in conjunction with hand washing as opposed to being an alternative. It also discusses issues with the gels such as dermatitis and their limitations such as being ineffective against norovirus. My advice would be to ensure that staff are taught the basics of hand washing, use a good antibacterial soap, hot water and spend time to make sure that the hands are cleaned properly. Don’t forget the backs of hands, between the fingers and under nails! To help protect against dermatitis, hand cream can be used. There are now products on the market incorporating silver ions, which could help further reduce build up of bacteria on the hands.
The guide discusses the use of hand swabs to assess the level of bacterial contamination – I would recommend the use of swabs for assessing the effectiveness of a food handler’s hand washing regime – you would be surprised by some of the results. Hygiene Audit Systems has swabbing kits available on the website.
This guidance is not legally binding and individual businesses can decide whether they want to use it but I would strongly recommend that businesses do follow this advice to help prevent the spread of infectious diseases through food, to comply with the legal requirements of Annex II, Chapter VIII of Regulation (EC) 852/2004 and to help with due diligence if an outbreak ever occurred.
See my previous blog on the use of Glow in the Dark powder and UV torches to demonstrate how bacteria and viruses can be transmitted from dirty hands.
The document can be found on our research pages and on the FSA’s website http://www.food.gov.uk/foodindustry/guidancenotes/hygguid/foodhandlersguide
