According to our knowledge, no studies on food handlers’
knowledge on major aspects of food safety were conducted in
Jordan. Therefore, the objective of this study was to measure the
level of food safety knowledge of food handlers working at fast food
restaurants in Amman and Irbid cities (the biggest two cities in
Jordan).
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Research design
A cross-sectional study was conducted from February to
November 2009 to assess food safety knowledge level among food
handlers at fast food restaurants in Amman and Irbid cities.
2.2. Participants
A total of 1084 food handlers in 297 fast food restaurants were
participated in the study. Based on the writing and reading abilities
of the respondents, questionnaires were filled in either by the
respondents or by face to face interview. The interviewers have
educational backgrounds in food science and were trained by the
researchers to conduct the survey.
2.3. Food safety knowledge questionnaire
The questionnaire consisted of two parts: the first part focused
on workers’ socio-demographic information and the second part of
the questionnaire covered major food safety knowledge concepts
including: personal hygiene (14 questions), cross contamination
prevention and sanitation (20 questions), safe storage, thawing,
cooking and reheating of the foods (14 questions), knowledge of
health problems that would affect food safety (10 questions),
knowledge of symptoms of foodborne illnesses (9 questions) and
knowledge of important foodborne pathogens (9 questions). All
questions were True/False or Multiple Choices Questions that were
adapted from published questionnaires (Bolton, Meally, Blair,
McDowell, & Cowan, 2008; Kennedy et al., 2005; Omemu &
Aderoju, 2008). To reduce the possibility of selecting the correct
answer by chance, all questions have the option “not sure”. The
questionnaire took about 15 min to complete. The questionnaire
was pretested on 30 food workers from 10 randomly selected
restaurants for clarity, understanding, and timing. No revisions
were performed based on the pilot testing as no problems or
comments were identified.
2.4. Statistical analysis
All statistical analyses were performed using the Statistical
Package for the Social Sciences, Version 16.0 (SPSS, Inc., Chicago, IL,
USA). Descriptive statistics were calculated for all variables. Oneway
analysis of variance (ANOVA) was carried out to identify the
relationship of food workers’ characteristics (age, educational level,
monthly income level, food workers’ experience, and enrollment in
food safety training course) with food safety knowledge score.
Knowledge scores were calculated by counting of items answered
correctly. Findings with a P-value <0.05 were considered to be
statistically significant.
3. Results
3.1. General characteristics of the study population
A total of 1084 male food handlers had participated in the study
with a mean age of 30.12 years (range ¼ 14e68 years) and their
average years of experience was 7.24 years (range ¼ 1e58 years).
More than half of the workers had an educational level 12 years
(56.9%, n ¼ 590) and had a monthly income level less than 200
Jordanian Dinar ($282) (57.6%, n ¼ 603). About 14.5% (n ¼ 156) of
the workers reported that they were previously enrolled in food
safety training program.
3.2. Overall food safety knowledge
The mean knowledge score of the tested food safety aspects are
shown in Table 1. The overall score of correct answers for the food
safety tested aspects: personal hygiene; cross contamination
prevention and sanitation; safe storage, thawing, cooking and
reheating of the foods; knowledge of health problems that would
affect food safety; and knowledge of symptoms of foodborne
illnesses was 47.11 (4.49) out of 67 points, corresponding to 69.4%
of questions answered correctly. The “knowledge of important
foodborne pathogen” aspect (9 questions) was not included in the
overall score to minimize the effect of the “true/false” answers on
the overall food safety knowledge score. The food safety aspect
with the highest percentage of correct answers was “knowledge of
symptoms of foodborne illnesses” (81.7%) while the aspect with the
lowest percentage of correct answers was “safe storage, thawing,
cooking and reheating of the foods” (52.4%).
3.3. Personal hygiene
Ninety percent or more of the correspondents were able to
identify the occasions at which they need to wash their hands and
knewthat gloves should be worn before touching ready to eat foods
(Table 2). However, approximately 82% believed that touching
a clean counter requires cleaning of the hands. Less than the third of
the correspondents (32%) knew the duration that should be spent
during washing the hands. More than the third believed that the
duration of hand washing depends on the last task.
3.4. Cross contamination prevention and sanitation
About half of the correspondents wash cutting board and knife
that were used to cut meat or poultry with hot water or hot water
and soap before they use them to chop vegetables (Table 3). Similar
rate of the correspondents knew the correct procedure for cleaning
and sanitizing cutting board and knife and about three fourth of the
correspondents knew that the same cutting board and knife must
not be used to chop vegetables after were used to cut meat and
poultry. About 75% of the correspondents knew the food contact
surface should be washed with water and soap then sanitized with
a sanitizer. About 14% of the correspondents would store ready to
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