Hepatitis A in Foodservice Workers

Posted on March 2, 2011 by PritzkerLaw

About 12 percent of foodservice workers who were surveyed about their work attendance said they had gone to work while sick with diarrhea or vomiting -- a rate that Penn State University professors said was alarming. The survey was published in the February 2011 edition of the Journal of Food Protection and summarized by the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences.

In the summer of 2009, a worker at the McDonald's restaurant in Milan, Illinois, attended work over a period of days while she was sick with Hepatitis A. The exposure caused a Hepatitis outbreak of diarrheal illness, Hep A,  that sickened at least 30 people. Scores of others may have avoided illness by obtaining a hepatitis A vaccine at an impromptu clinic set up by public health leaders in Illinois. It was a painful reminder that foodborne pathogens such as Hepatitis A, Shigella and Norovirus are often spread by sick workers to restaurant patrons through food.

National food safety law firm PritzkerOlsen, P.A., represented victims in the Illinois Hepatitis A outbreak and has been involved in other outbreaks around the country where infected foodservice workers have spread illness by coming into work. 

In the Milan, Ill., McDonald's case, the Hepatitis A carrier potentially exposed up to 10,000 people. It was powerful evidence for restaurant owners and managers to adopt and strictly enforce policies to keep sick workers at home. Not all restaurants are aware of the danger and in some cases a restaurant may be so busy that they order a sick person to come to work anyway.
  
The Journal article also said that economic hardships on workers cause some to ignore policies to stay at home because foodservice jobs aren't highly paid and health care benefits aren't in the cards for many independent restaurant workers. When managers do become aware of a problem, they need to contact the local health department and the worker should be tested to see if they are a carrier of a foodborne pathogen.  If so, there are protocols to follow in terms of keeping the worker away from the restaurant until consecutive stool samples test negative for the organism.
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