Food poisoning: "This is personal injury"
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| Food-poisoning |
Food-poisoning
Artificial fingernails and dirty gloves - again and again, it comes from negligent kitchen staff to food poisoning. Hygiene expert Ernst Tabori explains where hygiene is often deficient and how consumers can defend themselves.
Ali Health Info: Is it possible to sue the owner or cook of a restaurant or a snack if you have got food poisoning there?
Tabori: Yes, if you can prove the connection. The owner of a restaurant makes himself punishable if he lets people work with food, although reasons in the sense of the infection protection law speak against it.
Ali Health Info: What reasons prohibit contact with food?
Tabori: Of course, employees who have an acute gastrointestinal infection must be excluded from working with food. Similarly, people with inflammation of the hands - by suppurated skin infections, Staphylococcus aureus bacteria toxins can enter the food and cause food poisoning in the consumer.
TO PERSON
Ernst Tabori is Medical Director of the German Hygiene Advisory Center in Freiburg.
Ali Health Info: Where are the dangers if the staff is healthy?
Tabori: Pathogens are everywhere - therefore consistent hand hygiene is imperative when dealing with food. In addition, the staff must not wear rings or nail polish while working. Hygienically questionable - and also unappetizing - are also artificial fingernails, which are unfortunately often encountered in the catering industry. Hygienically nonsensical are also the gloves at the sausage and cheese counter staff, who often look so grubby as if the employee had not filed from Monday morning to Friday evening. Good hand hygiene is a much better option.
Ali Health Info: Which laws should protect consumers from poisoning?
Tabori: Throughout the EU and Switzerland, only foods that comply with HACCP guidelines may be traded and consumed. The guidelines say that anyone involved in food analyzes where food safety hazards exist and how to monitor it. For this purpose, a system must be introduced over which book must be kept.
Ali Health Info: Hard to imagine that this is implemented at every fry house from Stockholm to Corfu...
Tabori: Even small companies must at least have staff training and cleaning schedules. In addition to the quality of the starting product, especially the preparation, handling and storage of the finished food are of importance. If, for example, intestinal germs or salmonellae are present on chicken meat, these generally do not cause any problems when eating the roasted meat pieces. However, if salads, tomatoes, cucumbers, ie foods that are not subsequently cooked, are cut on the same chopping board and with the same knife as the raw chicken breast previously, contamination with the germs can lead to infections.
Ali Health Info: How can one prove that the restaurant or the snack was to blame for food poisoning?
Tabori: The question of whether the steak, the salad, the ice or something completely different has caused the gastrointestinal infection is usually not easy to answer. Unless there are more people who have eaten at this restaurant have similar symptoms and report this so that the connection can be made.
Ali Health Info: If you're not a student at the Landschulheim, that's usually not the case. What else can you do?
Tabori: Exact determination of pathogens in the stool or vomit is done in the laboratory. Well-equipped laboratories can also detect bacterial toxins or viruses, such as the Norovirus. This should be done using stool sample tubes.
Ali Health Info: Who has the hand when he commutes miserable between bed and toilet?
Tabori: These tubes are available from the doctor. The person, but of course everyone concerned, can commission the examination in the laboratory. If necessary, it also does a washed jam jar.
Ali Health Info: A proof that the food is eaten in a restaurant was the cause, but you still have not.
Tabori: No, the identical type of pathogen would have to be detected in the stool as well as in the food. However, it is usually the other way round: gastronomy strives to avoid being called in connection with a gastrointestinal infection. Therefore, samples of food are taken to prove in the event of reproach that the trigger is not from there. At least commercial kitchens, company restaurants, and refectories do this.
Ali Health Info: What can you do if you have neither samples of your own excretions, nor has eaten in a restaurant that has resampled?
Tabori: If food is suspected to be a food-borne infection, you can contact the local health department or the mayor and county councils. You can pursue a reasonable suspicion. Public health offices are also available in other EU countries.
Ali Health Info: What are the penalties? For me, it is bodily harm!
Tabori: I agree: a grossly negligent gastrointestinal infection is literally a physical injury. In my opinion, this is also the case if the operator does not do anything to prevent an infection. In the worst case, the Authority or the Health Department may, if there is an urgent suspicion of danger to the population, temporarily shut down a holding. Whether the prosecution gets involved, of course, lies at the discretion of the judicial authority. Irrespective of this, an injured party can bring a civil action.