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

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 learning 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 knowledge 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. © 2015 Taylor & Francis Group.