A disease that by law must be reported to health authorities, and several notifiable illnesses require an infected food handler to be excluded from handling…
It is a disease that by law must be reported to health authorities. Reporting lets public-health units monitor conditions, investigate sources and control outbreaks. Each state and territory keeps its own list of notifiable conditions.
The legal duty to notify usually falls on doctors and pathology laboratories. Food businesses are not the notifiers, but they must act on the exclusion rules when a food handler has certain infections.
Common ones include Salmonella, Campylobacter, listeriosis, hepatitis A, typhoid and certain E. coli infections. Exact lists vary slightly between states and territories.
Many do. Under Standard 3.2.2, a food handler with a foodborne infection must report it and not handle food where they could contaminate it. They should stay excluded until cleared to return.
Exclude the worker from food handling, record the exclusion, cooperate with any public-health investigation, and only allow return once the person is medically cleared and any conditions set by the health unit are met.