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Evaluating food safety and hygiene knowledge and practices among foodservice staff of feeding scheme in the primary schools in Soweto, South Africa
Author(s) -
Mgqibandaba Pretty Z.,
Madilo Felix K.,
DuPreez Cornelia J.,
Mjoka Joanne,
Unathi Kolanisi
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of food safety
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.427
H-Index - 43
eISSN - 1745-4565
pISSN - 0149-6085
DOI - 10.1111/jfs.12792
Subject(s) - food safety , hygiene , environmental health , food hygiene , hazard analysis and critical control points , nonprobability sampling , food preparation , medicine , hand washing , critical control point , hazard , best practice , population , political science , pathology , chemistry , organic chemistry , law
The study was to evaluate the food safety knowledge and hygiene practices among food handlers. A total of 42 food handlers in 13 basic schools under the School Feeding Scheme, Soweto, South Africa were recruited for the study using purposive and convenience sampling methods for the respondents and institutions, respectively. A piloted self‐administered questionnaire was used. All the respondents were female (100%) with the majority being between the ages of 31 and 40 (40%) and had secondary education (63%). About (90.5%) of the respondents indicated that food safety is very important. Frequent hand washing (95.2%); cleaning and sanitizing knives/cutting boards (95.3%); checking best before date (92.8); keeping kitchen surfaces clean (80.9%) among others were indicated as very important food safety and hygiene practices. However, they failed to agree that frozen foods, particularly meat are to be thawed using room temperature (4.8%) and also in the lower shelf in the refrigerators (26.2) as the best practices. Spearman's correlation coefficient revealed that no correlation exists between food safety knowledge and hygiene practices ( p < .05), but strong correlations among educational levels, knowledge, and practices ( p < .05). Hence, training and workshops particularly in hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP) is needed to cover‐up the lapses.