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Table 1. Mean score rating for respondents' food
hygiene attitudes (n
Table 2. Mean scorerating for respondents' self-re-
ported food hygiene practices (n
=
200).
=
200).
Attitudes
Practices
Mean
a
Mean (± SD)
a
Hand-washing
1. Wash hands after touching unwrapped
cooked foods
1. Learning more about food hygiene
and sanitation is important to me.
4.55 (± 0.78)
4.15
2. Refrigerator must be kept clean and
the inside surfaces should be washed
regularly to avoid from any contami-
nation of foods.
4.56 (± 0.76)
2. Wash hands before touching unwrapped
cooked foods
4.17
3. Wash hands before touching unwrapped raw
foods
4.20
3. Older foods must always be used first
and any food that has been stored
longer than the recommended time
should be destroyed.
4.58 (
±
0.68)
4. Wash hands after touching unwrapped raw
foods
4.26
Glove uses
1. Wash hands before using gloves
4. Safety food handling is an important
part of my job responsibilities
4.61 (± 0.67)
3.92
2. Wash hands after using gloves
4.11
5. Using caps, masks, gloves and ade-
quate clothing can reduce the risk of
food contamination.
4.62 (± 0.61)
Cross-contamination prevention
1. Use protective clothing when touch or dis-
tribute unwrapped foods
4.10
6. Raw foods should be kept separately
from cooked foods.
4.66 (± 0.73)
2. Wear cap while preparing foods
4.16
3. Aware the need to store food away before
dusting/sweeping food preparation area
4.23
a
Rating scale: 1
=
Strongly disagree; 5
=
Strongly agree.
a
Rating scale: 1
=
Never; 5
=
Always
cooked food and wearing jewelry while working
in the kitchen. Finally, hand-washing knowledge
was assessed on the need to scrub hands for five
seconds, and wash hands every time after touching
their hair, face or body, after handling waste food,
after using the toilet or after handling raw meat,
poultry, vegetables and eggs.
It can be concluded from the results that the
respondents have low level of knowledge about
hand washing procedure. Respondents also
reported low level of knowledge related to other
aspect of food hygiene (e.g., microorganism related
to foodborne illness and temperature control) pos-
sibly due to lack of understanding on the terminol-
ogy used in the questionnaire as most of them have
low educational level.
3.4
Food hygiene practices
Respondents' self-reported food hygiene practices
are shown in Table 2. In terms of hand washing,
respondents reported the lowest practices was
before and after touching cooked food compared
to raw foods. This finding indicated poor safe food
handling practices among respondents because
unwrapped cooked food must be handled after
hand washing. The result also showed poor prac-
tices related to correct use of glove. Respondents
reported the lowest practices for hand washing
before using glove (
M
3.92), which demonstrated
that food handlers in Serdang might be lacking of
knowledge regarding the correct use of glove.
The lowest practices for cross contamination
prevention among Serdang food handlers was the
“use protective clothing when touch or distribute
unwrapped foods” (
M
=
3.3
Food hygiene attitudes
Table 1 shows the mean score for respondents'
attitudes towards food hygiene. Attitudes toward
ensuring “raw foods should be kept separately from
cooked foods” has the highest mean score (
M
4.10).This states that the
food handlers seldom use complete protective
clothing while preparing foods, which includes
wearing clean overalls, protective shoes, apron, cap
and gloves while preparing the foods.
=
4.66)
followed by “using caps, masks, gloves and adequate
clothing can reduce the risk of food contamination”
(
M
=
4.62) and “safety food handling is an important
part of my job responsibilities”(
M
=
4.61). The low-
est mean scores for attitudes was towards “learning
more about food hygiene and sanitation is important
to me”(
M
=
4 CONCLUSION
4.55). The findings indicated that even
respondents have positive attitudes toward safe food
handling as part of their job responsibilities, they
may not perceive learning more about food hygiene
and sanitation is important to them.
=
In general, the findings of this study suggest food
hygiene knowledge, attitude and practices amon-
gfood handlers from restaurants in Serdang are
relatively good except for a few areas of concern.
Knowledge on food hygiene among food handlers
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