Food temperature knowledge and practice among food handlers at school canteens - Theory and Practice in Hospitality and Tourism Research - page 401

Food temperature knowledge and practice among food handlers
at school canteens

A. Ena-Arzairina, R.S. Raja-Saidah & M.D. Hayati
Faculty of Business Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia

A.A. Saidatul-Afzan
Faculty of Hotel and Tourism Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia

ABSTRACT: Reducing the risk and occurrence of foodborne illness is a priority for the foodservice
industries. Food handlers play an important role in preventing the occurrence of foodborne illness and
meeting the objective of serving harmless food. This paper is to identify food temperature knowledge
amongst food handlers in school canteens. This study had used pretest-posttest questionnaire approach.
The respondents are amongst food handlers at school canteens. To choose the sample size, purposive sam-
pling is use for collecting data. The data had been collected by using a structured questionnaire. Result
shows that the pretest and posttest method are effective in which the training given had more input for
food handlers on the knowledge and thus evade from food borne illness.

Keywords : Food temperature knowledge; school canteens; hygiene practice; training

1 INTRODUCTION Furthermore, Centre Disease Control and

Preven-tion (CDC, 2012) identified five risk
factors of food handling that promote to food-
borne illnesses which include cross contamination
between raw and fresh ready to-eat foods, lack of
hygiene and sanitation by food handlers, tempera-
ture abuse during storage and improper cooking
procedure.
Basically, temperature is the most important
factor in delaying or retaining the shelf life of
perishables food (Rojers, 2012). Chaug and Wei
(2013) stated that the fresh foods (perishables item)
demand strict temperature to avoid less quality
because of product characteristics itself have short
shelf life when fluctuating temperature. Therefore,
temperature is the most important factors and
has an impact on the storage life of food products
(Myo & Yoon, 2014).
The purpose of this study was to identify food
temperature knowledge amongst food handlers.
Previous studies have assessed the important of
knowledge and practices among food handlers.

Nowadays, foodborne diseases are extensive
devel-oped in developing countries and more so
especially at school canteens. Sharifa Ezat, Netty
& Sangaran (2013) reported that food poisoning
cases is on the rise as the evident by the incident
rate of 62.47 cases per 100,000 population in 2008
and 36.17 in 2009 in Malaysia.
However, there was in fact an increase in number
of episodes of foodborne outbreak reported by
vari-ous states in Malaysia commonly outbreaks
occurring in schools (Maizun Mohd Zain & Nyi
Nyi Naing, 2002; WHO, 2008; Sharif & Al-Malki,
2010). These numbers established that school chil-
dren have been the foremost victim in many food
poisoning cases mainly in Malaysia.
Schools are key settings that will provide chil-
dren with any health promotion programs that
planned to make the children start healthy dietary
and physical activity behaviors (Cullen & Watson,
2007). Stu-dents are captive customer which who is
usually in-competent to purchase food from exter-
nal sources within six hours of learning (Sanlier &
Konaklioglu, 2012). Thus, it is vital for schools to
realize their shared responsibility to provide safe
food and nutri-tious to their students. Hertzman
and Barrash (2011) explained that there is a still
insufficient study done on foods served in schools,
especially by education scholars.

2 MATERIAL AND METHODS

2.1 Target respondents
The respondents for this study were among the
food handlers in a school canteen. This is a case
study based on the school that went through an