Routes of Foodborne Illness & Germs
From your sniffling coworker to the raw chicken on your kitchen cutting board, everyday life is full of potential infectious hazards. With germs so common and seemingly everywhere, knowing how germs spread is vital to preventing infection and foodborne illness. There are seven possible ways for the transmission of bacteria and viruses to take place. Although some of these microorganisms in our environment are good for us and protect us, disease causing pathogens are the germs or bad guys.
In a food service environment, pathogens can be abundant so handwashing, working in your restaurant only when you are healthy, and good sanitation help us limit or shut down these routes of transmission. Some of the routes are not specific to food environments, but helps understand how they all contribute to disease transmission and our efforts for prevention.
Direct Contact –This mode of transmission involves physical contact and generally takes place through shaking hands, touching someone, kissing, sexual contact, etc. Body fluids such as blood, saliva, emesis, or mucous provide the transfer substance. HIV, bloodborne forms of hepatitis, and STD’s would be in this category.
Indirect Contact—Germs are spread between people via an intermediate object, usually something inanimate. Door knobs, railings, counters, tables, and other frequently touched objects are common culprits. Cold viruses and the Norovirus (foodborne illness leader) can be transmitted this way.
Droplet Spread—An infectious agent is spread through the air when two people are near each other (cough, sneeze, or just talking). Respiratory diseases such as influenza are in this category.
Fecal-To-Oral Route—Here’s our most common foodborne illness route. Transmission occurs when an infected person fails to adequately wash their hands after going to the bathroom and touches food. The person then goes on to have direct contact with another person, such as shaking hands, or spreads germs through indirect contact by contaminating food with hands, for example. If an ill person (viral or bacterial illness) prepares your ready-to-eat food, such as a salad, chances are good you will get that disease. As a little food safety levity, we call this the poopy finger route. Hepatitis A, Norovirus, Salmonella, E. coli, etc. are spread this way.
Common-vehicle Spread—This form of transmission involves a contaminated, inanimate “vehicle” that spreads germs to several or many people. Examples include a city water supply that’s contaminated with parasites or packaged foods tainted with Salmonella or Listeria. Temperature often plays a role in this type of spread since many germs will produce larger amounts of toxin in a warmer, more humid environment, but are kept in check at refrigerated conditions.
Airborne Spread—Germs are spread through the air over a distance of several feet. The infectious organisms are usually contained in tiny droplets that can remain suspended in air for hours or days. Tuberculosis, anthrax, and Norovirus can be spread by airborne transmission. Airborne spread can be affected by the speed of direction of airflow—enclosed spaces with poor air circulation (cruise ships, casinos, airplanes, etc.) can be particularly bad.
Vector-borne Spread—This route is less associated with food. It involves the transfer of germs to a person via the body of another organism (contaminated flies, ticks, or a mosquito from the contact or a bite).
Bottom Line: We continually need to stress to food workers the importance of good personal hygiene, frequent handwashing, using barriers between hands and food, and not taking the risk of working with food when ill or directly exposed to someone who is sick. People preparing our food do literally have a hand in food safety. Understanding the simplicity of disease transmission might have some shock value when training your crew about food safety, so use every tool to help them understand the how, when, why to safer food and a healthy crew.
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About the Author: Lacie Thrall
Lacie Thrall passed away in early 2017 after a long illness. She dedicated her 35-year career to improving the health and well-being of others by promoting food safety best practices. Lacie worked in environmental health for 17 years before joining FoodHandler in 1997 as the Director of Safety Management. While at FoodHandler, she trained employees and customers on safe food handling practices, including proper hand hygiene and glove use. Later as a FoodHandler consultant, Lacie provided the foodservice industry with food safety information and advice through her blog on FoodHandler.com.
This information is provided as a general guideline and is not intended to be, nor does it, constitute legal or regulatory advice. Additional Federal regulations may apply to your particular circumstances. State, regional and local laws, ordinances and regulations may also apply.
Developing Good Food Safety Habits
Good habits and habit development are something that has fascinated me for several years. If you’ve attended any the training programs or presentations that my colleagues and I have conducted through our Center for Food Safety in Child Nutrition Programs, you’ve likely heard me opine about the importance of habits and how habits are created. Many times, in foodservice operations we wonder why our staff don’t follow the food safety practices we have established in our operation. Perhaps they don’t wash their hands when they are required, perhaps they just don’t use the proper method of handwashing, or perhaps we find that they don’t complete our HACCP logs as often as our program dictates should occur. And while we can stomp our feet and say “it is their job, they should just do it”, it really isn’t that simple. We can’t order people to change, although if we could, business and human resources would be so much simpler.
Getting Your Playbook for Food Safety Organized
As anyone who has ever worked in a foodservice operation knows, from the time food is received in your establishment to the time it is served to your customers, following proper food safety practices is crucial. What many don’t often think about is this time really should extend from the time the manager places their orders with their suppliers (including which purveyors you utilize), through the time the food is consumed – even if that consumption occurs off your premises and days after the original order was picked up by the guest. This is something that has certainly been highlighted by the pandemic as customers across the nation are utilizing take-out, curbside to go, and third-party delivery options more so now than ever before.
Getting Started with Building the Infrastructure
Hopefully in our first January blog, we convinced you of the importance of establishing an infrastructure within your operation to support a safe food culture. So, how does one go about doing this? Well, like any major project, break it into small bites. In our opinion, having a written guide for employees that documents expectations related to food safety basics of employee health and hygiene, temperature controls, and cleaning and sanitizing is the first step. Having this documentation serves as a reference for training and helps fulfill the mission of most foodservice operators which is to serve safe, quality food.
Food Safety Resolutions for the New Year
Finally, 2020 is in our rearview mirror and we can all turn the page to 2021! Resolutions for the new year might be more of the same from prior years (lose weight, exercise more, less screen time, etc.) OR you may have identified new practices to implement in your operation. If the latter, likely goals included some practices related to food safety – especially given the turmoil of 2020 and heightened concern by customers. It is our philosophy that attention to safe food handling practices is a win-win for any operation because of the direct relationship between food safety and food quality, which in turn leads to customer satisfaction. This past year has also demonstrated that attention to safety can affect the bottom line. Thus, the topic of our first SafeBites webinar for 2021 is on the topic of the return on investment of food safety, it is scheduled for January 20, so register now and please plan to attend.
