Safe Food Handling Knowledge and Practices of Street Food Vendors at Louis Trichardt Makhado Local Municipality, South Africa

Abstract

Street-food vendors are an important component of the food supply chain; however, they have been implicated in the spreading of foodborne diseases. Street food often poses a risk to the health of consumers as they are prepared and sold in unhygienic conditions that bring about microbial and environmental contamination. This study aims to investigate safe-food handling knowledge and practices of street food vendors at Louis Trichardt, Makhado Local Municipality, Limpopo Province, South Africa. The researcher conducted the study using a quantitative approach with a cross-sectional descriptive survey design; a non-probability purposive sampling technique was utilized to sample 61 street-food vendors, and a self-administered questionnaire and a structured-observational checklist were used to collect data to determine the vendor’s food safety knowledge and practices. Pre-testing was conducted with 20 randomly selected street-food vendors to determine the validity of the measuring instruments and amended them, where necessary. The collected data was analyzed using SPSS statistical software version 19.0. The results showed that majority of the respondents 85.25% were females between the age range of 36-45 years with a high school education level with grade 10-12. About 68.85% of the street food vendors knew the correct way to wash hands, however, 52.46% were observed to not wash their hands before food preparation which may compromise the safety of street food. The majority of the vendors had moderate food safety knowledge (60.66%). This study concludes that street-food vendors practiced unsatisfactory hygiene and sanitary practices, during food preparation, Major infringements were- cross contamination from different food ingredients, lack of temperature control, lack of hand washing, inadequate infrastructure. This study recommends that food handlers are imparted with knowledge through targeted health education and promotion; such initiatives should be implemented periodically to ensure desired food-handling practices are implemented and sustained.