Food Poisoning and Infectious Diseases

Contact: Food, Health & Safety Team, Civic Centre, Carlisle

Telephone: (01228) 817336/817559

Online Form: Online enquiry

Email: FoodandSafety@carlisle.gov.uk  

Fax: (01228) 817346

The Council's Food, Health & Safety Team investigates cases of confirmed food poisoning and other notifiable infectious diseases. The Health Protection Agency usually reports these to us after a positive result from their laboratory. This normally happens when people contact their GP and submit a stool sample for examination.

The Council's Environmental Health Officers may decide to investigate to try to prevent the spread of infection within the home and the community and to try to establish where the infection came from.

Whether or not we investigate will depend on the likely cause of the illness, whether a positive result confirming an infectious disease has been received from the laboratory, the number of people affected, the severity of the illness, and any delay between the start of the illness and receipt of the report.

Where a decision is made to investigate, an Officer will contact the person(s) with the symptoms, either by post, telephone or by visiting them and will ask them questions regarding:

• what and where they've eaten before they were ill;
• details of their symptoms;
• if they've been on holiday abroad;
• whether or not their GP has taken a stool sample and;
• if anybody else they ate with also had any symptoms. They may ask that person to provide a stool sample.

Bacteria and symptoms

We receive many complaints alleging that a certain food has caused illness. Most people will blame the last thing they ate before becoming ill. However, most food poisoning bacteria do not cause illness until 12 to 36 hours after they have entered the body. This means it will hardly ever be what you ate last that made you ill, but rather what you ate yesterday or even the day before.

Not all cases of infectious disease are due to contaminated food, many are caused by viruses that often have the same symptoms of food poisoning and spread very quickly from one person to another. These types of infection are especially common in babies and young children who pick them up from other children at nurseries, playgroups and school. Other sources of infection include farm animals and household pets.

The main causes of food poisoning

The main causes of food poisoning are:

• preparing foods too far in advance
• not cooking foods properly
• not defrosting foods correctly
• storing foods incorrectly (i.e. too warm) so that bacteria is able to quickly grow
• cross contamination of foods after cooking
• infection from people handling foods due to poor hygiene

What should I do if I suspect I have food poisoning?

If you suspect you are suffering from an infectious disease, including food poisoning, it is recommended that you visit your GP as soon as possible, who may ask you to submit a sample for examination.

If a person with symptoms is a food handler or health care/nursery worker with direct contact or contact through serving food, with 'at risk' patients or persons for whom an infection would have serious consequences, they should not return to work until they are symptom-free for 48 hours. They must also inform their employer of their symptoms.

Parents or guardians of children under 5 years or of children or adults unable to implement good standards of personal hygiene, are advised to keep them away from school or other establishments until they have also been symptom-free for 48 hours.

Further information on infectious diseases from www.hpa.org.uk/infections