What covers a foodborne illness outbreak in our dining room?

A community dining room serves the same food to most of the building at the same time. An outbreak therefore produces dozens of simultaneous claimants in a population where dehydration, electrolyte disturbance and secondary complications turn a self-limiting illness into a hospitalization and sometimes a death.

All of those claimants normally arise from one occurrence, which means they share a single per-occurrence limit rather than each having their own. That is the structural reason a community should not carry the same general liability limit as a comparably sized office building.

Food prepared and served by you is a products and completed operations exposure under general liability, and the products aggregate is often a separate, smaller aggregate than the general aggregate. Check it as a number.

Where the food came from an outside vendor, there is a subrogation and risk transfer path against the vendor, which is why vendor contracts should require product liability limits, additional insured status and indemnity. Confirm the certificates are current, because a food service vendor that has let coverage lapse leaves the whole exposure with you.

And read the communicable disease exclusion. Several current forms are broad enough to be argued to reach a bacterial foodborne illness, which would leave a substantial multi-claimant exposure uninsured. Ask for a carve-back for foodborne illness specifically.

A health department investigation typically closes the kitchen, which means outside catering, additional labor and possibly an admissions hold. Those are extra expense and business income items and they need to be triggered by something other than physical damage, since a closure order is not physical damage.

Ask specifically whether your business income coverage includes an order of civil authority trigger and whether it responds to a closure order arising from contamination. Many forms do not without an endorsement, and this is the most common gap in the first-party half of the exposure.

Temperature logs for receiving, storage, cooking, holding and cooling. Employee illness reporting and exclusion records, since an ill food handler is the most common source and the one an investigator looks for first. Certified food protection manager credentials on file. Supplier records and lot traceability. And retained samples where your program provides for them.

Foodborne illness investigations are documentary and fast. The operator who can produce the logs within hours is in an entirely different position from the one who cannot, both with the health department and with the plaintiff who arrives afterward.