I ran a restaurant in college and had to become a certified food manager (a step up from the line food handler). So while I won’t prentend to have all the data, it was clear that simple processes prevent 99.99% of food borne illness, and not one law required plastic gloves! In fact they expressly warned NOT to use gloves if you were not sure they were food grade.
If you follow the simple rules, most illness is caused by tainted supply.
The most common infraction I saw was failing to wash hands, followed by not separating meats from other stations. (Work surface, knives, hand washing, etc)
In a busy kitchen, you would be shocked at how much cross contamination occurs every single day, plastic or not. Plastic is not the solution, training and oversight is the essential thing.
