Roles and Responsibilities of Food Handlers
Who counts as a food handler
Under the Food Hygiene Regulations 2009 a food handler is anyone who prepares, handles, packs, serves, or otherwise comes into contact with food or food-contact surfaces - including kitchen porters and dishwashers, not just cooks.
Duties of the individual handler
- Complete a recognised food-handler training course and keep the certificate available for inspection.
- Maintain current anti-typhoid vaccination and attend medical examination as required.
- Report illness, skin lesions, or symptoms (diarrhoea, vomiting, fever, jaundice, sore throat with fever) to the supervisor before starting work.
- Stay away from food handling while symptomatic and until cleared.
- Follow hygiene rules: handwashing, clean clothing, covered hair, no jewellery, no bare-hand contact with ready-to-eat food.
- Protect food from contamination by equipment, waste, chemicals, and pests; report defects.
Duties of the employer or supervisor
Provide training, vaccination access, handwash facilities, soap, disposable towels, and clean aprons; supervise practice; exclude or redeploy sick staff; keep training and health records. Responsibility is shared, but the handler is personally accountable for reporting their own condition.
Worked example
A cook returns from leave with jaundice. Correct action: report to the supervisor immediately, be excluded from food handling, and seek medical assessment. Jaundice may indicate hepatitis A, which spreads through food via unwashed hands. The supervisor records the exclusion and only allows a return to duty on medical clearance. Letting the cook "just do the cold section" is still a breach, because the person is still in a food area.
Traps that cost marks
- Treating only cooks as food handlers.
- Thinking gloves remove the duty to wash hands.
- Saying the employer alone is responsible for reporting illness - the handler must report.
- Confusing typhoid vaccination with a general health certificate.