 In one of my videos a few years ago, I talked about a study that examined the food safety practices of restaurant workers in several fast food chains in the Midwest, finding an astounding 0% compliance with federal food code guidelines for hand washing. Well, a follow-up study was recently published on the food safety practices in retail deli departments. They looked at both independent and chain stores. How do you think they did overall? Was their hands 10% of the times they were supposed to? 50% of the time? For example, did they wash their hands after touching bare body parts before they touched the meat? And the answer is they washed their hands 11% of the time, better than the cynic in me expected, but still only about 1 in 10 times did they wash their hands when they were supposed to, though it was 1 in 50 at the independent stores, only 2% compliance with hand washing. The chain stores actually did better. Why is this important? Consider this case report of occupational transmission of hepatitis C virus, resulting from use of the same supermarket meat slicer. Two women worked in the same deli department, one hep C positive, something usually only transmitted by sharing dirty needles, unless you're using a common ham cutting machine with frequent bleeding hand injuries, and then one hep C positive woman can become two. In previous years I've talked about the potential to contract hepatitis from a virus in pork, but this time at least it wasn't the pig's fault.