Documents food worker 8 results

"Background: Foodborne disease is a significant problem worldwide. Research exploring sources of outbreaks indicates a pronounced role for food workers' improper health and hygiene practice. Objective: To investigate food workers' perceptions of factors that impact proper food safety practice. Method: Interviews with food service workers in Baltimore, MD, USA discussing food safety practices and factors that impact implementation in the workplace. A social ecological model organizes multiple levels of influence on health and hygiene behavior. Results: Issues raised by interviewees include factors across the five levels of the social ecological model, and confirm findings from previous work. Interviews also reveal many factors not highlighted in prior work, including issues with food service policies and procedures, working conditions (e.g., pay and benefits), community resources, and state and federal policies. Conclusion: Food safety interventions should adopt an ecological orientation that accounts for factors at multiple levels, including workers' social and structural context, that impact food safety practice."

"Food workers' health and hygiene are common pathways to foodborne disease outbreaks. Improving food system jobs is important to food safety because working conditions impact workers' health, hygiene, and safe food handling. Stakeholders from key industries have advanced working conditions as an issue of public safety in the United States. Yet, for the food industry, stakeholder engagement with this topic is seemingly limited. To understand this lack of action, we interviewed key informants from organizations recognized for their agenda-setting role on food-worker issues. Findings suggest that participants recognize the work standards/food safety connection, yet perceived barriers limit adoption of a food safety frame, including more pressing priorities (e.g., occupational safety); poor fit with organizational strategies and mission; and questionable utility, including potential negative consequences. Using these findings, we consider how public health advocates may connect food working conditions to food and public safety and elevate it to the public policy agenda."

"The relation between accidents and age was studied among female nurses and food services workers in the Quebec health and social services sector. Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of accident occurrence and severity rates were performed. Descriptive accident profiles were also done. The results reveal a decrease of occurrence rate with age in both occupations, and an increase in accident severity with age among food services workers but not nurses. However, the only stable relationship between accident indicators and aging revealed by the longitudinal analyses was a decrease of occurrence rate among nurses. Seven age-related accident profiles were identified. For example, low back pain characterised young nurses while wrist and shoulder pain were characteristic of older food services workers. Similarly, falls were typical of older workers, irrespective of occupation. These results illustrate the importance of using homogeneous occupational groups, multiple sources of accident data, and both cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses when conducting research on aging. Finally, this study emphasizes the need for field research."

"BackgroundThere are many proven and suspected occupational causes of lung cancer, which will become relatively more important over time, as smoking prevalence decreases.MethodsWe interviewed 457 cases aged 20–75 years notified to the New Zealand Cancer Registry during 2007–2008, and 792 population controls. We collected information on demographic details, potential confounders, and employment history. Associations were estimated using logistic regression adjusted for gender, age, ethnicity, smoking, and socio-economic status.ResultsAmong occupations of a priori interest, elevated odds ratios (ORs) were observed for sawmill, wood panel and related wood-processing plant operators (OR 4.63; 95% CI 1.05–20.29), butchers (OR 8.77, 95% CI 1.06–72.55), rubber and plastics products machine operators (4.27; 1.16–15.66), heavy truck drivers (2.24; 1.19–4.21) and workers in petroleum, coal, chemical and associated product manufacturing (1.80; 1.11–2.90); non-significantly elevated risks were also observed for loggers (4.67; 0.81–27.03), welders and flame-cutters (2.50; 0.86–7.25), pressers (5.74; 0.96–34.42), and electric and electronic equipment assemblers (3.61; 0.96–13.57). Several occupations and industries not of a priori interest also showed increased risks, including nursing associate professionals (5.45; 2.29–12.99), enrolled nurses (7.95; 3.10–20.42), care givers (3.47; 1.40–8.59), plant and machine operators and assemblers (1.61; 1.20–2.16), stationary machine operators and assemblers (1.67; 1.22–2.28), food and related products processing machine operators (1.98; 1.23–3.19), laborers and related elementary service workers (1.45; 1.05–2.00), manufacturing (1.34; 1.02–1.77), car retailing (3.08; 1.36–6.94), and road freight transport (3.02; 1.45–6.27).ConclusionsCertain occupations and industries have increased lung cancer risks in New Zealand, including wood workers, metal workers, meat workers, textile workers and drivers."

"Why do employers in specific sectors use migrant workers to a significant extent? Taking temporary migrant work in the Australian food services sector as a case study, this article argues that employer demand for migrant workers is shaped by two forms of social regulation: the immigration controls that create a supply of different kinds of migrant workers, and the labour market norms and institutions that operate within a specific industrial sector. Specifically, the article argues that the cost-minimization strategy of the Australian food services sector in conjunction with its precarious work norms result in ‘demand' on the part of employers in the sector for vulnerable workers to perform precarious jobs. Such ‘demand' is met in part by the workers supplied through temporary labour migration programs who may be an attractive form of precarious labour because of the conditionalities they experience. The normalization of noncompliance with labour laws by food services employers, that stems from the broader culture of illegality in the sector, further heightens the vulnerability (and attractiveness) of temporary migrant labour, allowing employers to ‘demand' illegal working conditions. "