Health Officials Throw Down the Gauntlet

A customer at a local bagel shop was impressed recently to see that all workers wore plastic gloves to handle food people ordered. She was far less impressed, however, when she saw the workers handling money at the cash register, wearing those same gloves.

Health officials here will tell you that wearing gloves in restaurants and food shops can be both good and bad. Plastic gloves can assure that workers’ dirty hands aren’t coming in contact with food. But gloves can also provide customers a false sense of security.

You might think that an establishment that requires food preparers to wear gloves has high regard for cleanliness in all areas.

But county health officials say such restaurants and food shops can have just as many cockroaches and unsanitary conditions as the next. Also, there’s some question whether the gloves are any better than clean hands.

“Gloves don’t do any good unless you change gloves often, each time you change tasks,” said William Ford, assistant director for environmental health at the county’s Health Care Agency.

Most food shops where workers wear gloves are laid out so that customers watch their orders being prepared. At the Subway sandwich chain, for example, all the sandwiches are made in full view.

Nash Patel, who manages the Subway on Bristol Street in Santa Ana, said the corporate headquarters strongly recommends gloves, so almost all Subways follow that policy.

But Patel himself only smiles when asked if the gloves provide a cleaner environment.

“It’s for visual appeal,” he said. “It makes customers believe the food is being handled with care. In truth, it’s no better than just using your hands. Soap and water, you can’t beat it.”

Food handlers wearing gloves are just as inclined to natural movements as the rest of us, added Jeff Lineberry, program manager for California’s Food Safety Program. These movements include scratching at their face, using the gloved hand to wipe at something or perhaps picking up something that’s dropped on the floor.

“Gloves don’t do any good if you forget you have them on,” Lineberry said.

Also, many health officials are concerned that those with gloves will not wash their hands as often as they should, thinking they’re already protecting their customers.

“It’s especially of concern,” Ford said, “when the worker wearing gloves handles raw chicken, then keeps those same gloves on to handle other tasks. That creates a high risk of transferring bacteria.”

Gloves are opposed by the restaurant industry, Lineberry said, mainly because workers find them uncomfortable and complain they cause rashes.

Florida law changed last weekend to make gloves almost mandatory for some workers in restaurants and food shops. But Carol Dover, chief executive officer of the Florida Restaurant Assn., says flatly: “We’ve learned gloves don’t work.”

California law does not require restaurant workers to wear gloves, but there are some exceptions. Any food handlers with a sore, with rashes, wearing unusual jewelry on the hands or with artificial fingernails are required to wear gloves.

The larger problem, Lineberry believes, is that many restaurants simply do not place enough emphasis on hand washing.

There’s a new California law that Lineberry believes will bring improvements when it goes into effect at the end of the year. It requires that each restaurant have one employee with a special food-safety training certificate.

“We think that requirement will lead a lot of restaurants to a rigorous hand-washing policy that they didn’t have before,” Lineberry added.