Food Service Compliance

To answer these questions, I referenced dozens of articles and scientific reports and enlisted the help of Ben Chapman, a food safety specialist from the North Carolina State University and cohost of Risky or Not and Food Safety Talk, as well as Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University, and Dr. Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist and infection preventionist. This article has been thoroughly vetted for scientific accuracy and I will continue to update it with the most up-to-date information as it emerges.

I’m still not convinced. How could food not be a vector?
Let’s say a food worker coughs while preparing my food, how could I not pick up the virus from eating it? This confused me as well, which is why I specifically inquired about it. According to Chapman, the risk is minimal. Even if a worker sneezes directly into a bowl of raw salad greens before packing it in a take-out container for you to take home, as gross as it is, it's unlikely to get you sick.

This 2018 overview of both experimental and observational study of respiratory viruses from the scientific journal Current Opion in Virology (COVIRO) explains that respiratory viruses reproduce along the respiratory tract—a different pathway than the digestive tract food follows when you swallow it. And while you might say that you just inhaled that salad, more likely you ate it with a fork and swallowed it.

Dr. Rasmussen concurs, adding that when actively eating—that is, producing saliva, chewing, and swallowing—we are protected from infection in two ways. First, saliva contains proteolytic enzymes—chemicals that break down proteins—which help break down our food and pathogens. Second, the act of chewing and swallowing minimizes the amount of time that any potentially infectious viral load is in contact with mucosa or the upper respiratory tract. The less time a pathogen spends in contact with potentially infectable cells, the lower the likelihood of actual infection.

What about eating with your hands?
So if ingesting the virus isn't a concern, what about this scenario: a worker coughs on a cutting board then assembles a hamburger directly on that board before placing it in a take-out container. You then come home and eat that burger with your bare hands, then pick your nose, or do something else that deposits the virus along your respiratory tract. In this situation, the viral load has been diluted several times. First when it was transferred from the board to the burger bun. Next, more viral load was shed when the bun was placed in the takeout container. It is diluted again when you pick up the burger before interacting with your face in inadvisable ways. While he didn't rule out the possibility of picking up the disease this way, Chapman described it as "a moonshot, even before you touch your face."

BisbeeGal wrote:

Casa de Sol B&B, only tried it once (last week), but the chef is Luis who owned the Al Chile food truck who does really nice stuff.  Only Tues, Thurs, and Sat. Menu changes weekly on FB.