Glove Rule For Restaurant Workers Stiffened Agency To Replace Vague Wording With Unambiguous Requirement

Starting July 1, Idaho restaurant workers will break the rules if they make your cold sandwich or salad with their bare hands.

The clarifications could make Idaho’s guidelines among the strictest in the nation, said Steven Grover, public health and safety adviser for the National Restaurant Association.

The goal is to clarify Idaho’s “no bare hands” rule and to reduce the chances of transmitting illness.

“We are working the best we can, within our limited budgets, to provide the best food protection that we can,” said Don Brothers of the state Department of Health and Welfare, supervisor of Idaho’s food-protection program.

As Idaho law reads now, restaurant workers statewide are required to wear disposable gloves or take other steps to avoid bare-hands contact “where practical.” The law applies to cold food, because adequate cooking kills the food-borne bugs.

Food inspectors and restaurant owners statewide had different ideas about when gloves were practical, and the law offered no clarification, Brothers said.

So, Health and Welfare worked with the restaurant industry to come up with a page of specific examples.

Restaurants that are cited for failing to obey the law and do not improve matters could be closed down. That punishment already is in place. But the Central District Health Department, which inspects southwestern Idaho restaurants rarely, if ever, uses it.

That is because of confusion over the “where practical” wording, said Bob Jue of Central District Health.

But the National Restaurant Association believes the “where practical” language is better left alone.

The health district sent out a questionnaire in January. About half of 1,500 establishments responded. Of those, about 85 percent said they were following the “no bare hands” approach.