The Law and Foodborne Illness

Understanding the law surrounding foodborne illness is an important step in helping establish your risk and your position under the law. Foodborne illness lawsuits are on the rise in the USA, UK and Europe and settlements continue to increase.  It will only be a matter of time before South African operators are held liable under SA law.   

South African Law holds employers liable for known health hazards

“ Every employer shall provide and maintain, as far as is reasonably practicable, a working environment that is safe and without risk to the health of his employees” Occupational Health and Safety Act, 85 of 1993 (Sec 8.1)

An outbreak of foodborne illness is a public health crisis. When government authorities implicate a food service operation as the cause of the outbreak, it is a crisis with implications both legal and commercial.

Breaking the law is clearly a risk, but the bigger risk is any injury or loss of life sustained by your customer. Virtually all those who prepare food do so within the parameters of the law. The DOH process assures the basics of facility compliance. Unfortunately, many operators stop there.

While most operators understand that an outbreak of foodborne illness can make for bad publicity and it is therefore bad for business, few fully understand the standard that will determine their liability to the people injured as part of the outbreak. Indeed many operators assume that so long as the operation was state of the art, and that they did nothing wrong, there is no risk. They also assume that if the problem that gave rise to the outbreak had not yet been discovered, the restaurant operation cannot be held responsible. Both of theses assumptions are wrong.

Under the law operators are liable and can be held accountable for their negligence.  Neither good intentions or ignorance are a solid defense.