No abstract

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.

In recent years, incidences of food poisoning have been reported in some schools across the country. However, little attention has been paid to the hygiene practices of food vendors in the schools. This study, therefore, investigates the food safety knowledge and practices of food vendors catering for tertiary and second cycle students in the Ho municipality. The piloted and validated questionnaire used to sample 608 respondents revealed that the majority of the respondents sampled were female (76.0%), between the ages of 26 and 40 (51%), married (47.4%), and have tertiary or senior high school certificate (60.7%). They have been in business for not more than 2 years (36.2%) and had neither food safety (62.3%) nor good manufacturing practice (81.9%) training. However, they have sufficient knowledge in food safety regarding purchasing, storage, cooking and reheating, and personal hygiene, but exhibited poor knowledge and practice of food temperature control protocols. Both Kendall's tau‐b coefficient correlation and linear regression model revealed a significant positive correlation between food safety knowledge and practices of the vendors. Nevertheless, regular training and monitoring are necessary to enable the vendors to fully implement the food temperature control protocols, which is one of the major causes of food poisoning in the country.

No abstract

No abstract

Aliha is a maize-based traditional fermented beverage prepared and consumed in Ghana, predominantly in the Volta Region and other parts of Ghana. The study sought to characterize the production processes, the nutritional values, and microbial composition of aliha. A total of 126 aliha producers in the Volta, Greater Accra, and Ashanti Regions were sampled using snowballing to identify and to recruit the producers for the study, using a pretested self-administered questionnaire. The physicochemical and microbial composition were carried out using standard methods. Four different production techniques were identified across the production sites. The variations identified during the production existed across the production chain. The main ingredients used for aliha production are corn, caramel, sugar, and water. However, aliha produced by the ‘original’ method (DN2) presented the best nutritional values (proteins, energy, and calcium), followed by backslopping techniques, AG1 (total carbohydrates and ash), and AG2 (fats and oils and phosphorus). Fungi and Enterobacteriaceae dominated the initial fermentation stages (24 h) with low acid values. However, as the fermentation time increased from 24 h to 72 h, the acid contents of the fermenting beverage increased sharply leading to a drastic reduction of fungi and Enterobacteriaceae contents with increasing records of lactic acid bacterial counts. Even though DN2 presented the best nutritional values, it was highly contaminated. Hence, the producers must be encouraged to use backslopping techniques for safety and to shorten the duration of production.

Good manufacturing practice (GMP) is the primary sanitary and processing requirement necessary to ensure the production of safe foods. It ensures that the production facilities and processes have the necessary conditions to prevent potential hazards from contaminating foods. However, little is known about its application in the production of a traditionally fermented and well-patronized food like the Ga kenkey. This study was therefore designed to evaluate the knowledge and practices of Ga kenkey producers in GMPs. A self-administered questionnaire was prepared and used to recruit 42 Ga kenkey producers using convenient sampling techniques. Out of the 42 producers, 83.3% were females, between 18 and 33 years (61.9%) and single (42.9%), and have been in the business for about 0 to 5 years (69.1%). A significant number of producers had neither GMP, food safety nor HACCP training. The producers have inadequate knowledge of GMPs since majority of them do not use gloves and consider wearing them unnecessary. Even though the producers agreed that GMPs improve product qualities, the establishment of reputation, and customer satisfaction and identify problems within the production process, they however did not pay attention to any form of hazards during the production process. Therefore, since education, training, and experience had a significant ( P ≤ 0.05 ) positive influence on the producers’ knowledge and practices, sufficient training in GMPs coupled with regular supervision should be provided to the producers for the hygienic and safe production of this commonly patronized food.

No abstract