MSU Extension Agrifood Safety

How On-farm hazards can make people sick, what we can do to minimize them

Jordan DeVries, Produce Safety Technician

Microorganisms that cause foodborne illnesses, like norovirus, salmonella, and toxigenic E. coli, are  commonly transmitted from hand-to-mouth. This route of transmission occurs when infected workers contaminate fresh produce or food contact surfaces by touching them after touching their mouths or using toilets without adequate handwashing.

The best practice to mitigate this risk is to have an illness policy for employees, including a robust monitoring and reporting system to keep workers experiencing acute foodborne illnesses from coming to work until their health condition no longer persists.

An illness policy, or sick policy, is an agreement you make with your workers; its primary purpose is to prevent contamination of the crop and food-contact surfaces, but it also benefits workers by preventing additional members of the crew from becoming ill and incurring lost wages. 

A monitoring and reporting system for employee illness reinforces, but doesn’t replace a sick policy. It’s not an agreement, but a practice to be voluntarily implemented to reduce the potential for making customers ill, as well as lost wages for your employees. Use it to encourage employees to self-report any illnesses, as well as assist crew leaders in monitoring for illness throughout the day.

Speaking of hands, the most valuable practice to implement on the farm to deter the spread of foodborne illness is frequent handwashing. The produce safety rule says that workers must wash their hands when the hands may have become contaminated from known or reasonably foreseeable hazards. Most farm laborers have learned to wash hands after using toilets or returning from break, but they should also be required to wash hands before entering growing areas after using personal vehicles, and interacting with domestic animals, prior to donning gloves, and any other time their hands may have become contaminated. Encouraging handwashing after touching one’s face or mouth, in addition to after using a personal device, is also a good practice due to these surfaces having a high probability of contamination.

Wild animals are known sources of the microorganisms that cause foodborne illness. When it’s not people, water, and equipment, its wildlife that most often brings these risks. Knowing what signs of animal intrusion to look for and how to most easily deter this wildlife will be the next issue’s topic in this microbial risk awareness series.