Assessment of food handlers’ knowledge, attitude and practices on food hygiene in Serdang, Selangor - Theory and Practice in Hospitality and Tourism Research - page 445

Assessment of food handlers' knowledge, attitude and practices on food
hygiene in Serdang, Selangor

N.A. Mahyuddin & Z. Zainon
Food Safety Research Centre (FOSREC), Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia

U.F. Ungku-Zainal-Abidin
Faculty of Food Science and Technology, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia

ABSTRACT: This paper reported a research on food hygiene knowledge, attitude and practices of food
handlers from restaurants in Serdang, Selangor. A total of 200 questionnaires were distributed among
the food handlers at food premises selected using convenience sampling technique. The findings from
this study showed that food hygiene knowledge related to hand washing procedure (72.50%), temperature
control of food, and microbial (66.0%) were lacking among the food handlers. Attitude towards learn-
ing more about food hygiene and sanitation has the lowest rating ( M = 4.55), which suggest food handler
may not perceive this as important to them. Respondents reported the lowest practices for hand washing
before using glove ( M = 3.92), which demonstrated that food handlers in Serdang might be lack of knowl-
edge regarding the correct use of glove. This study provided data about the current knowledge, attitudes
and practices of food handlers from restaurant operations. The results showed that further continuous
effort should be invested in food hygiene education and enforcement for food handlers from commercial
foodservice operations such as restaurant.

Keywords : Food hygiene, knowledge, attitude, practices, food handlers

1 INTRODUCTION

Good sanitation practices in restaurants are
important not only to reduce cross contamination
of food but also to increase the morale of workers
(Al-Khatib & Mitwalli, 2009). All food handlers
should be given some training to enable them to
perform their job without any risk of causing food
poisoning. According to Ribel, Mathias, Camp-
bell, and Wiens (1994), training had an impact
on examination scores in the short-term and their
study showed restaurants with staffs having food
handler education significantly perform well in
food hygiene practices than those staffs that have
no such education.
Many food premises involved in food poi-
soning cases due to food handlers poor han-
dling practices. They have the responsibility of
ensuring the production of safe foods, and their
knowledge, attitudes and practices play a major
role in the occurrence of food poisoning cases.
The objectives of this study were three folds:
1) to determine the level of knowledge on food
hygiene practices among the food handlers in the
Serdang, 2) to evaluate food hygiene attitudes
and practices among food handlers, and 3) to
self-reported food hygiene practices among food
handlers.

Food safety is very important in today's food indus-
tries as people have become increasingly concern
about the risks and quality related to the foods.
This issue is not only a threat to the low income
countries but also as a challenge to the medium
and high income nations. Statistics of food borne
illness cases shows that the most common bacteria
which cause food borne diseases are Salmonella
(378 cases in 2003), Escherichia coli (74 cases in
2003), Campylobacter (268 cases in 2002) (Sun
& Ockerman, 2005). Incidents of food poisoning
outbreaks continue to rise from malpractice of
food hygiene regardless an increasing number of
food handlers receiving food safety training (Clay-
ton, Griffith, Price & Peter, 2002)
The improper food handling practices among
food handlers may be implicated in 97% of all food
borne illness associated with catering outlets (Howes,
McEwan, Griffiths & Harris, 1996). Research
showed lack of knowledge pertaining to time and
temperature control, prevention of cross contamina-
tion and sources and modes of transmission of food
poisoning bacteria has contributed to poor practices
among the food handlers (Albrecht, 1995).