Ever feel like your world has turned upside down — and not in a good way — after eating out?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has cast some light on why customers get food poisoning, aside from unhygienic practices in the kitchen. Some 40% of foodborne outbreaks at restaurants and eateries were linked to food contamination by an ill or infectious worker, according to a new report by the CDC.
And the way to prevent it? More paid sick leave.
Among the 800 food-borne illness outbreaks from 2017 to 2019 in 875 related food establishments, norovirus — a contagious virus that causes vomiting and diarrhea — was the “most commonly identified cause of outbreaks” reported to the National Environmental Assessment Reporting System (NEARS), the report said.
What’s more, contamination of food by ill or infectious food workers contributed to approximately 40% of outbreaks.
Here’s the kicker: fewer than half of the managers interviewed (44%) said their establishments provide paid sick leave to any workers, the report found.
“Paid sick leave protects everyone,” said Tom Frieden, epidemiologist and a former CDC director, on Twitter. Frieden is also the president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, a health initiative on cardiovascular disease. “No one should have to choose between their paycheck or potentially exposing others to infection,” he wrote.
Although most managers said their workplace had an ill-worker policy, oftentimes these policies were missing components intended to reduce foodborne risk, such as not including enough illness symptoms requiring employees to report the fact they were not feeling well, or not restricting employees from working, the authors wrote.
With few sick-leave options and low pay, ill workers continue to work, the authors noted. The U.S. is one of the few countries in the industrialized world without mandatory paid leave.
“Food workers report numerous reasons for working when ill, such as loss of pay and perceived social pressure,” the authors said. “Expanded paid sick leave in a restaurant chain reduced the incidence of working while ill among front-line food service workers, and supportive paid sick leave regulations were found to be associated with decreased foodborne illness rates,” they added.
About 77% of all private-sector workers had paid sick leave in 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A larger percentage (92%) of state and local government workers received paid sick leave last year.
But access to paid leave varies by income and job. Only 35% of people whose hourly wages were among the lowest 10% had access to paid sick leave, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report released in 2021. That compared to 95% of those among the top 10% of wage earners.
Although there are no federal legal requirements for paid sick leave, according to the Department of Labor, more than a dozen states and territories, plus some 20 municipalities and cities such as Seattle and New York City, have their own paid sick-leave laws.
Workers at public and private organizations with more than 50 employees who have worked 1,250 hours during the past 12 months are entitled to take up to 12 work weeks of leave a year, as set out by the Family and Medical Leave Act. But that leave is unpaid.
Few American workers have access to paid family leave. That specifically refers to paid time off for situations including caring for a family member with a health condition or spending time with a newborn. Only 25% of workers in the U.S. had paid family leave last year, according to the BLS data.
This story originally appeared on Marketwatch
