APRIL HN

The CDC estimates that approximately 48 million people get sick from foodborne illness every year. 128,000 of these people end up in the hospital and 3,000 die. The five most common foodborne ill- nesses are norovirus, salmonella, clostridium perfringens, campylobacteria and staph aureus. Approx- imately 25% of people and animals have Staph on their skin and in their nose and it usually does not GLOVES FOR F

cause illness in healthy people, but Staph has the ability to make toxins that can cause food poisoning. If one of these individuals does not wear gloves when preparing food and the food is not heat treated, the bacteria grow, toxins develop and a customer is sick with a foodborne illness. There needs to be a careful balance when wearing gloves while handling food. As a food safety profes- sional, it is disheartening for me to see servers wearing gloves and not changing between tasks, clean- ing of tables, handing someone a check or serving food. When you ask a food work how often they change their gloves many are quick to say between every task, but when you look into the garbage can or inventory at the end of the day it is apparent that they aren’t following the protocol. Unfortunately, most kitchen staff don’t change their gloves often enough too. I recently observed a counter person preparing three bagels, one with whitefish salad and tomato, one with a bacon and egg sandwich, lastly a bagel with tofu. In all three cases he touched the food with his gloved hands, the same gloved hands. He also used a knife, wrapped the bagels, wrote the price on the bagels with sharp- ie and wiped the counter with a cloth rag. He did not change his gloves during this entire time. In this case the lack of glove changing is more than a sanitary issue where we have to worry about salmonella, e-coli and staph, we need to also worry about cross contamination of allergens, be conscious about religious beliefs with people who do not eat pork and for the vegans among us who do not consume any animal products.