Volume : IV, Issue : VIII, August - 2015

Hygiene practices and food safety knowledge among street food vendors in Kashmir.

Sadiqa Qureshi, Prof. Naheedvaida, Dr. Humaira Azim

Abstract :

Harm caused by foodborne illnesses underscore the global threats posed by unsafe foods.World Health Day celeated on 7 April 2015, with WHO highlighted the challenges and opportunities associated with food safety under the slogan "From farm to plate, make food safe." Street foods have become an important part of changing dietary pattern. People consume street foods without paying attention on hygiene and sanitation. Vendors of street food constitute a major source of health risk, especially through oro–faucal transmission of pathogens, and vendor related risk is particularly high in poor resource community. For this reason the study was conducted to document the hygiene practices and food safety knowledge among street food vendors in Kashmir.Pretested semi structured questionnaires were used to interview food handlers. Food vendors were randomly selected. Various parameters were assessed including personal hygiene, acquisition of cooking skills, handling of food ,food contamination knowledge, location, utensils used, care of equipment and other practices were recorded through an observation .The SPSS program version 11 and Microsoft excel were used for all analyses. The study revealed that majority of street food vendors were men (86.6%) who fell into the average age group of 41–50 years. Around (56.1 %) had not received any education indicating majority of them were illiterate, (92.3%) street vendors admitted that they washed food before cooking .It was marked that 80%of the vendors used same surface for cooking the food more than twice. Only (19.04%) vendors used aprons and cent percent served food with bare hands .The study found that 73.3% of the vendors blew air into the packing back. Data obtained from the street food vendors showed that many wrong practices (intentional or unintentional) followed by them which can pose a serious health risk to the consumers. The study concluded that street food vendors in Kashmir did not had correct knowledge of handling the food necessitating the importance of organising training workshops for them.

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Article: Download PDF   DOI : 10.36106/ijsr  

Cite This Article:

Sadiqa Qureshi, Prof.NaheedVaida, Dr.Humaira Azim Hygiene practices and food safety knowledge among street food vendors in Kashmir. International Journal of Scientific Research, Vol : 4, Issue : 8 August 2015

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