Fitness to work

A food handler who is ill can pass the infection to many people. The law says anyone working with food who has certain illnesses or symptoms must report them to their manager straight away. This is a legal duty, not a choice.

Tell your manager before you start work if you have vomiting or diarrhoea. Also report infected wounds, skin conditions and sores, stomach pain, fever, jaundice, and infections of the nose or throat. If symptoms start at work, tell your manager at once, leave the food area and go home.

After vomiting or diarrhoea, stay away from food handling until 48 hours after your symptoms stop. Feeling better is not enough, because you may still carry the infection. The 48 hours start when symptoms stop naturally. If you took medicine to stop diarrhoea, count the 48 hours from when you stopped taking it and had no symptoms.

For example, if your symptoms stopped naturally at 7am on Friday, the earliest you can handle food is 7am on Sunday.

If someone in your home has vomiting and diarrhoea, tell your manager. You may not need to stay away from work, but your manager needs to know. If they have been diagnosed with a serious infection, you may have to stay away.

Cover cuts and sores with a brightly coloured waterproof dressing. A bright colour is easy to see if the dressing falls into food. Many businesses use blue. Tell your manager about an infected wound even if it is covered. If an infected area cannot be fully covered, you should not work with food until it has healed.

Do not hide illness because the team is short of staff or you are worried about pay. Managers must keep people away from food when the rules say so. One shift is not worth a food poisoning outbreak.