The purpose of this study was to assess the consumers' food safety knowledge and its determinants. The analysis was based on data collected through a cross-sectional survey in East Malaysia, which described the knowledge about personal hygiene, food borne disease symptoms, high-risk foods, cross-contamination, and temperature control held by Sibu-based consumers. Up to 99.5% of consumers correctly answered the question on hand hygiene in food handling. However, only 23.3% had a detailed knowledge of the temperature effect on bacterial growth in food. The level of food safety knowledge differed by gender, age, education level, number of children and food preparation frequency. The logistic regression model used for this data found a high level of food safety knowledge among tertiary graduates (OR = 42.26; 95% CI: 9.97, 179.06). It also highlighted the importance of food safety knowledge as an effort to control food borne diseases (FBD), by focusing on consumer food handling in the home and how to extent the benefits of food safety education to the whole society.

This study employed the extended theory of planned behavior (TPB) to predict the intention of adult consumers towards safe food handling at home. A self-administered survey was distributed to a total of 623 respondents who lived in the Sibu district, Malaysia and analyzed the data using the partial least squares structural equation modeling technique. The empirical results revealed that consumers' attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavior control were statistically significant and positively linked to the intention of safe food handling. Furthermore, the results indicated that the main predictor of consumer safe food handling intention was subjective norm. This study confirmed that food safety knowledge had a positive impact on consumer's attitude. From a practical standpoint, this study provided justification in highlighting the roles of family that encouraged consumers to perform safe food handling at home.

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Being knowledgeable about food safety is one of the strategies to address food-borne diseases (FBD). The systematic review was focuses on food safety knowledge and the respective interventions. Generally, numerous relevant studies have been done to determine the level of food safety knowledge among food handlers, but studies from a Malaysian perspective were limited. Therefore, the present study reviewed a number of previous studies regarding level of food safety knowledge and type of interventions that have been done among various categories of food handlers in Malaysia. For the review purpose, preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) was adopted based on Science Direct, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases. A total of 22 resulted from the searching and were analyzed systematically. The review of food safety knowledge was divided into three themes consisting of food handlers at premises, consumers, and students. The results of this review have identified the knowledge gap of food handlers, and the authors provide recommendations for future food safety education.