Knowledge Attitude and Practices of Food Handlers towards Food Hygiene

Abstract

Knowledge of food hygiene essentially entails the handlers’ awareness or 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 the consumers, so that food safety is achieved. Food hygiene knowledge, attitude and practices are important because inadequate knowledge, poor attitude and poor sanitation practices have life-threatening danger to food safety. It is important to have an understanding of the interaction on prevailing food hygiene knowledge attitude and practices of food handlers in order to minimize foodborne outbreaks. The main objective of this study was to assess the knowledge, attitude and practices of food handlers regarding the aspect of food hygiene in Kanpur. One hundred ten food handlers from fifty food establishments of Kanpur were involved in this study. The data was collected from the street food vendors with the help of structured questionnaire and extensive observation. Analysis of data revealed that Knowledge and attitude towards food hygiene was satisfactory among food handlers, where most of the food handlers have fair knowledge and attitude that was (50.0 %) and (40.90%) but fair practice was practiced by only (17.27%) whereas,   majority of them had poor practice (46.36). About 53.6 per cent of food handlers always wash their hands before handling food and only (38.1%) of the food handlers had knowledge about hygiene and sanitation. Statistical testing with chi-square at p<0.05 showed that there is no correlation between educational level of the food handlers and practice of food hygiene; like-wise attitude of the handlers towards food hygiene and work experience had no impact on food hygiene practices of food handlers. The present study concludes that practice regarding food hygiene is not satisfactory and therefore there is need to increase the practice level of food handlers towards food hygiene.