Food safety knowledge and hygiene practices among the staff of school feeding scheme in the basic schools of Sewoto, South Africa

The study was to evaluate the food safety knowledge and hygiene practices of the staff of the school feeding scheme in Soweto. A total of 42 food handlers in 13 basic schools under the School Feeding Scheme, Soweto, South Africa were recruited for the study using purposive and convenience sampling methods for the respondents and institutions respectively. A piloted self-administered questionnaire was used. All the respondents were female (100%) with majority being between the ages of 31 and 40 (40%) and had secondary education (63%). About 38 (90.5%) of the respondents indicated that food safety is important, hence, identified “promotion of good health 41 (97.6%), avoidance of bacterial infection 39 (92.9%) and prevention of food poisoning 39 (92.9)” as the major importance. Frequent hand washing 40 (95.2%); cleaning and sanitizing knives/cutting boards 40 (95.3%); checking best before date 39 (92.8); keeping kitchen surfaces clean (80.9%) and checking freshness/appearance of the food upon delivery (88.1%) were indicated as very important food safety and hygiene practices. However, they failed to agree that frozen foods, particularly meat are to be thawed using room temperature (4.8%) and also in the lower shelf in the refrigerators (26.2%) as the best practices. Spearman’s correlation coefficient revealed that no correlation exists between food safety knowledge and hygiene practices. However, there was strong positive correlations among educational level, knowledge and practices (P>0.05). Eventhough they have good knowledge and understanding of food safety issues, they still need training and workshops particularly in HACCP to cover-up the lapses.