Knowledge and Practice of Food Hygiene Among Food Vendors

Knowledge and Practice of Food Hygiene Among Food Vendors

CHAPTER ONE

OBJECTIVES OF STUDY

The general aim of this research is to determine the type and level of food hygiene practices adopted by food vendors in ABU, Zaria, Kaduna state, Nigeria.

The specific objectives are:

To assess the level of knowledge of food hygiene among the food vendors in A.B.U, Zaria;
To assess the attitude of food vendors towards food hygiene;
To assess the practice of food hygiene the food vendors adopt while running their business;
To investigate the type of medical examination that is being done before a new food vendor is taken and periodic examination being done;
To screen the food vendors for asymptomatic carriers of Salmonella specie(s); important pathogen(s) that could cause food.

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

INTRODUCTION

Food hygiene

Food hygiene is an increasingly important public health issue. Governments all over the world are intensifying their efforts to improve food safety. These efforts are in response to an increasing number of food safety problems and rising consumer concerns. The action of monitoring food to ensure that it will not cause food-borne illness is known as food safety.⁹ Food safety continues to be a public health problem worldwide because food borne illnesses are widespread. Consequently, consumers are increasingly concerned about food safety and quality; and demand more transparency in production and distribution. Reports have it that food borne and waterborne diarrhoea diseases together kill about 2.2 million people each year.¹⁰

Although food contamination may occur at any point from production, processing, distribution and preparation, food vendors and other people responsible for food preparation have a critical role in the occurrence and spread of food borne illnesses as their hands and other body parts may harbour micro-organisms and their actions as well, may compromise the chain of safety from “farm-to-fork”. Indeed, previous studies have implicated food vendors and have shown improper food preparation practices in domestic kitchen, contaminated equipment and food, to be a significant origin of most of these cases. Other factors that have been cited as contributing to food borne diseases include unsafe keeping of food (temperature and time), poor personal hygiene and food from unsafe sources.¹⁰

Food vendors’ knowledge, attitude and practice of food hygiene; a review of literatures:

Knowledge of food hygiene essentially entails the vendors‟ awareness of things to be done or things to be put in place, in the course of either acquiring raw food materials, preparing food or serving food to consumers, so that food safety is achieved. This knowledge encompass knowing that obtaining raw materials (perishable and non-perishable food items) for food preparation from good sources, the correct storage methods for different food items, proper separation of raw food items from ready-to-eat food, the need to wash hands correctly after being exposed to certain contaminants, proper waste management, the importance of cooking food at the right temperature and for the correct duration, the importance of proper dressing & observance of personal hygiene, the importance of proper washing of fruits and vegetable, availability of wholesome portable water for drinking etc all have critical roles in ensuring the safety of food/drink for the unsuspecting.

In line with one of the objectives of this study, that is, assessing food hygiene knowledge among food vendors, an attempt is being made to review other studies done by researchers on same subject for the sake of in-depth understanding of the general trend of events with regards knowledge of food hygiene by vendors.

A study by Nigusse and Kumie¹¹ to assess food hygiene practices and prevalence of intestinal parasites among two hundred and seventy seven (277) food vendors working in Mekelle university students‟ cafeteria, Addis Ababa showed that the knowledge of food hygiene was fair (64.6% of respondents answered 60-80% of the questions correctly). 12.3% of the respondents were certified with six months formal food vendor‟s training program from different training centres. Among these, 28(82.4%) of them reported that the training was useful for the provision of food safety in their work places.

Another study carried out by Margaret, Judith and Paul titled „knowledge in food hygiene and hygienic practices differ- in food vendors at a hospital in Nairobi, Kenya‟ sought to look at knowledge and practice of food hygiene amongst three different groups of food vendors in a hospital set up in Nairobi, Kenya.¹² These groups are differentiated by their level of education; those that went to college, those that went to secondary school and those that had primary education. They employed the use of both verbal (questionnaires) and non-verbal (observational checklist) means in their assessment of knowledge and practice of food hygiene. The study population was 95.

CHAPTER THREE

METHODOLOGY

STUDY DESIGN

A cross-sectional descriptive study design was employed in this study.

STUDY POPULATION

The study population comprises all food vendors in both campuses of A.B.U., Zaria who operate restaurants.

Inclusion Criteria

All restaurants in the two campuses of A.B.U. (i.e. within A.B.U.) All managers/manageress of restaurants within A.B.U.

All the cooks, stewards/stewardesses, those who go to purchase food items for each of the restaurant within A.B.U.

Exclusion Criteria

All the open air cooking spots and kiosks of the two campuses of A.B.U due to the fact that those who are involved in open air cooking frequently change their locations and sometimes change the food type being sold. Kiosks were excluded because they deal mostly in snacks and drinks.

All food hawkers within A.B.U.

All the cashiers, the general cleaners and others who don‟t handle food in the restaurants within A.B.U.

SAMPLE SIZE

The total population was taken as the sample size, in view of the fact that the population size is known. Therefore, all the 191 food vendors in A.B.U. were studied.

Tool(s) for data collection

The following tools were employed to collect data from eligible respondents. Viz:-

Questionnaire: it contained mostly structured close-ended questions with few open- ended questions (see Appendix A). It was used to collect information from each food vendor on knowledge, attitude and practice of food hygiene. The first part of the questionnaire was on socio-demographics while the later part covers questions on knowledge of food hygiene, attitude towards hygiene, practice of hygiene, medical examination of vendors etc (see Appendix A). Pre-testing of the questionnaires was done in a restaurant in Nuhu Bamalli Polytechnic, Zaria that had about twenty food vendors. After this exercise, some questions in the original questionnaire were modified and those not relevant were expunged. The questionnaires were administered by the
An observational checklist: this was used to assess the level of food hygiene practices of each of the eating establishment (see Appendix B). Pre-testing of this checklist was done in same restaurant in Nuhu Bamalli Polytechnic and afterward, the checklist was modified.

CHAPTER FOUR

RESULTS

A total number of 174 food vendors were interviewed as against the earlier stated number of one hundred and ninety-one (191) signifying a response rate of 91.1%. The mean age of the respondents was 34.47 ± 13.92 years.

The age group 20-29 had the highest number of food vendors (63 out of 174) whereas the older age groups (i.e. 60-69 and 70-79) had the least. Also, there were more female (73.6%) than male in the food handling business. Hausas were the majority among the food vendors (52.9%) with Islam as the dominant religion of the vendors (62.6%). More food vendors, from the study, were married individuals (56.9%). Also most of the food vendors were secondary school leavers. Some of the food vendors were illiterate (35.6%).

CHAPTER FIVE

SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

SUMMARY

From this study carried out to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of food hygiene among A.B.U‟s food vendors coupled with the observations, the following inferences can be drawn:

The level of knowledge of food hygiene amongst the food vendors was high giving the fact that almost all the food vendors had never had any formal training on food safety. Again though, questions on which knowledge was tested were by no means exhaustive;
Food vendors‟ attitude towards hygiene practice was equally good. Again the scope of questions covered in assessing this could have been broadened to allow for better judgment of attitude;
Level of hygiene practice among the food vendors was however not encouraging with majority of them only having fair practice. A few of them still had hygiene practices that could be considered poor. Observation from the checklist analysis revealed that most of the restaurants had acceptable score with regards the practice of food hygiene;
Pre-employment medical examination normally done to screen individuals for eligibility to run eateries in A.B.U was not accorded the importance that it deserved. However, on-the-job medical examination was given a little more attention though the frequency of such examination was lower than expected which should be, at least once every year;
Occurrence of two cases of chronic carrier of Salmonella, typhimurium and a case of carrier of Escherichia, coli in the gastro-intestinal tract are important findings as both organisms have the potential of causing food

CONCLUSION

The knowledge and attitude about food hygiene amongst the food vendors was good. However, the practice of food hygiene was only fair. Medical examination of the food vendors was not satisfactory and stool examination revealed few parasites and two organisms capable of causing food poisoning. Direct observation of hygiene practices amongst these vendors in the restaurants revealed that only about one third of the food vendors readily washed hands in the course of food handling.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Based on the findings from this study, the following recommendations are proffered:

Any prospective food vendor seeking to operate an eatery in A.B.U should be compulsorily made to have pre-employment examination to assess his/her level of knowledge of food hygiene by the sanitary health officer(s) of the environmental health unit in conjunction with the medical officer(s) of the University Health Services Department. This would enable the Health Department screen out those who might pose some threat to the university community as far as food safety is
After the individual has successfully scaled through the pre-employment examination, he/she should undergo a comprehensive medical examination, which the medical officer(s) of the university health services department should request and perform, to confirm or refute eligibility to run such a What is being done presently is not really encouraging as some food vendors get to undergo only periodic medical examination and not pre-employment medical examination.
The university‟s rules and regulations concerning choice of site for restaurant, the requirements of the structure, standard hygiene practice etc should always be enforced by the health team of the environmental health unit of University Health Department through regular visitations to the restaurants and sanctioning of offenders to serve as
Regular and periodic medical examinations, by the medical officers, for the food vendors should be a norm rather than the present unscheduled and infrequent examination being done. Also, the periodic inspection, by the university health team, of the various eateries should be improved upon. This should also include a check on the source(s) of water the restaurant uses for domestic activities and for drinking coupled with periodic microbial testing of prepared foods, fish, meat, vegetables/fruits and drinking water which the microbiologist would undertake;
There should be good communication system whereby the health team or the body charged with the responsibilities of managing all the eateries should be informed on time whenever a new food vendor is to be employed by the manager/manageress of any eatery;
Periodic food safety training sessions should be organized by the University Health Department for the vendors in order to bring them abreast with global best practices and current trend in food handling business. This can be done by bringing in experts who could use audio-visual aids and/or practical demonstration of proper food handling to pass home their

REFERENCES

Malcolm T, Bronwyn H. What is food hygiene? Global Food Safety Consultants. 2005. Website: thefsc.co.uk. Accessed: 19th Feb. 2011.
World Health Organization. Food safety and food borne illness. Updated: March 2007. Website: who.int/foodsafety. Accessed: 19th Feb. 2011.
World Health Organization. Recommended International Code of Practice. General Principle of Food Hygiene. 1999. Website: who.int/foodsafety. Accessed: 19th Feb. 2011.
Alapati A. Food Poisoning: Definition, Symptoms, Signs, Causes, Diagnosis, Treatment, Prevention & Lawyers. Health Chrome. The Bantam Medical Dictionary. 6th ed. Website: http://www.emedicinehealth.com/food_poisoning and http://www.righthealth.com/topic/Causes_Of_Food_Poisoning/overview. Retrieved on 11th June, 2011.
Glyn W. The Burden of Food Borne Illness. Food Safety C & G International Inc. 2010 Aug 17;246. Accessed on 8th Mar. 2011 from ceeandgee.com
Akunyili D. 20,000 die annually of food poisoning. Accessed from nigeriabestforum.com website on 8th Mar. 2011.
Omemu AM, Aderoju ST. Food safety knowledge and practices of street vendors in the city of Abeokuta, Nigeria. Food control. 2008 Apr;19(4):396-402.

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