Evaluation of knowledge, attitude and practices of food handlers in campus cafeterias

Abstract

The aim of this study is to assess the knowledge, attitude and practices (KAP) of food safety among food handlers of cafeterias in a university campus. It is a common scenario for university students in Malaysia to have their meals in cafeterias within the campus area. In a normal academic semester session, the number of students in the campus can be thousands at one time. The issue of hygienic level in cafeterias in universities is alarming since the number of students in a university campus is much higher than in a school. In general, food handlers should pay serious attention towards food hygiene and safety in order to avoid foodborne disease. It is highly critical to investigate thoroughly the hygienic level in the cafeterias inside the campus so that to totally understand the level of risk students are exposed to when having their meals in the cafeterias. To get such information is fundamental in strategising means to ensure the level of hygiene in the cafeterias is at least, acceptable for non-harmful effects to the students. This has motivated the design and execution of this study. In this study, all cafeterias in a selected university campus located in Peninsular Malaysia were evaluated for their level of hygiene. There was a total of 30 cafeteria's food handlers altogether included in the investigation. The KAP level was assessed by giving out properly designed questionnaires to the food handlers. It is important for food handlers to equip themselves with knowledge on good food handling practices. Beside knowledge and law enforcement, the attitude of the food handlers also is another important factor that may influence the occurrence of foodborne disease. Basically, all three traits; knowledge, attitude and education, are compulsory to achieve safe food handling practice. Therefore all these three aspects were taken into account in details in this study. Based on the findings, correlations between these aspects were established. Besides, appropriate recommendations to overcome the problems revealed from this study are also provided.