As announced in the Federal Law Gazette (July 2000), the Infection Protection Act (IfSG) replaced the Federal Law for Control of Infectious Diseases (BSeuchG) on the first of January, 2001, ending its reign for the past forty years. Incorporating some of the tried and tested rules from the BSeuchG, the Infection Protection Act contains new rules on case reporting procedures, hospital hygiene, communal establishments and food handling enterprises, which will gradually be implemented through administrative channels, jurisdiction, professional editorials and academic publications. In place of requiring physical examinations, x-rays and stool specimens from employees in communal establishments and food handling enterprises according to the BSeuchG, the Infection Protection Act holds informative talks with workers in these fields on infectious diseases, on favourable conditions for spreading the disease, and on how agents contaminate certain products in food handling enterprises that can cause consumers to become ill. These informative talks with both employees and visitors in communal establishments and with employees in food handling enterprises (see further §§ 34/35 and 42/43 IfSG) are based on the general rules of the Infection Protection Act (§ 1 Para. 2 and § 3), which adhere to the guidelines found in the leaflets “Prevention by information and education” and “Fostering personal responsibility in communal establishments and enterprises”. On the basis of school legislation, public health law and the rules stated in § 34 of the Infection Protection Act, community health services must fulfil the duties of a occupational health physician in schools and other communal institutions. Because of the need to repeat training sessions for employees in these institutions every two years, the work load of public health officials has increased sharply. Training sessions are oral and entail handing out leaflets. Depending on the degree of expertise, these sessions can be quite time consuming. However, quality must not be sacrificed in order to ease the work load. Consequently, general practitioners in occupational health are expected to cooperate with public health services and take over these training sessions. The initial informative talk with the employees in food handling enterprises is, in accordance with § 43 Para 1 of The Infection Protection Act, both oral and written and is administered by the community health service. Further instructional sessions on diarrhoea, typhus, hepatitis A, suppurating skin diseases, among others (see § 42 IfSG) should be held annually in the respective enterprises. While the employer is responsible for holding these meetings, their medicinal nature requires the competence of a doctor. In 1999, Charlottenburg, a district in Berlin, issued 8,650 certificates; Frankfurt am Main issued around 6,600 the same year. These examples show clearly how much time is required for the initial and following instructions. In order to reach the goal of having employees who are both informed and responsible, a mutual understanding and good communications between the public health service and occupational health are of utmost importance. Dispensing of the required stool specimen in accordance with §§ 17/18 of the BSeuchG has been heavily criticised, for fear that an undetected carrier could endanger the purity of a product. However, the prevalence of positive stool specimen ranged between 0,3 and 0,7 percent in the 90 s and any relationship between the examination and infectious epidemiological insight of infections due to food contamination could not be proven. Surely, this shows that the best way to prevent infections is by informing and instructing people about the dangers.