The Awareness of Food Safety Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices among Food Handlers during COVID-19

Abstract

Food safety is an important social and public health agenda that affects people worldwide. Studies have shown that the awareness of food safety knowledge has increased even before the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the public awareness of food safety in Malaysia is considered low. Most consumers are less concerned with the preparation of food. Hence, this study aims to measure the level of awareness of foodborne diseases among food handlers by using the knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) model. This is a nationwide, cross-sectional study involving 281 food handlers who attended food handler training between July and November 2021. Based on the overall results of the respondents' knowledge, attitudes, and practices, the researchers believe that attending training on safe food handling courses contributes to better food hygiene and safety. These findings suggest that prevention and intervention strategies to prevent food poisoning should emphasize food hygiene and safety. They should constantly exercise the five good food handling practices to ensure the food prepared is clean and safe to consume. However, the limitation of this study is that it does not cover all the food handlers in Malaysia, although it helps in getting an initial picture of the current situation. In addition, this study was conducted during the COVID-19 outbreak and post-COVID-19 studies are needed to enable comparisons to be made.