Food Safety Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice of College Students, Ethiopia, 2019: A Cross-Sectional Study

Food safety-related practices among residents aged 18-75 years during the COVID-19 pandemic: a cross-sectional study in Southwest China

BACKGROUND

Good food safety practices are essential to minimizing foodborne diseases. The present study explored the food safety-related practices of residents during the COVID-19 pandemic in Southwest China and identified the impacting factors.

METHODS

Residents aged 18-75 years from Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan, and Chongqing, China, were included in our study. The convenience sampling method was used to select participants, and face-to-face surveys were conducted in households and communities to collect data. Descriptive statistics including sociodemographic characteristics of respondents and weighted percentages were obtained and the log-binomial regression was used to evaluate the influencing factors associated with food safety-related practices.

RESULTS

Overall, 7,848 respondents were involved, with 97.5% efficacy. Disparities in food safety-related practices were observed between males and females, with the former performing poorer practices than the latter (70.5% vs. 68.0%, respectively). Notably, paying attention to nutrition labels when shopping for prepackaged foods was the worst practice. Age, ethnicity, region, occupation, education level, and income were identified as significant determinants of food safety-related practices. Moreover, in comparison to males, females were more likely to acquire pertinent knowledge from diverse sources, including social media, family members/ friends, books/ newspapers/ magazines, experts, and food sales staff (p < 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS

Males performed inferior food safety-related practices than females during the COVID-19 pandemic in Southwest China. It is suggested that future food safety education programs should incorporate diverse targeted approaches, with emphasis on males. The role of mainstream media in promoting food safety practices should be expanded and prioritized in the forthcoming initiatives.

Knowledge, attitude, and practices toward food safety among students in Bangladesh: A cross-sectional web-based study

Background

Foodborne diseases are a preventable but under-reported public health issue. These illnesses are a public health concern and contribute significantly to healthcare costs. People must understand how their knowledge, attitudes, and practices affect food safety and how they can reduce the risk of foodborne illness. This study aimed at investigating the current situation of knowledge, attitudes, and practices toward food safety among Bangladeshi students and identifying the determinants of having adequate knowledge, favorable attitudes, and good practices.

Methods

The research is based on a cross-sectional anonymous online survey that took place from January 1st to February 15th, 2022. Participants in this survey had to be at least 8th-grade students enrolled in Bangladeshi institutions. Upon description of the study's aim, the questionnaire's concept, assurances regarding respondents' confidentiality, and the study's voluntary nature, informed consent was taken from each participant before starting the survey. Descriptive statistics, Chi-square test, and logistic regression were used to explore the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of students and identify factors affecting them using the statistical software STATA.

Results

A total of 777 students participated in the study, the majority of them were male (63.96%) and aged between 18 and 25 years (60%). Almost half of the respondents were at the undergraduate level and less than half of the participants (45%) lived with their families. Among the participants, around 47% had adequate knowledge, 87% had favorable attitudes, and only 52% had good practices toward food safety. Female students, students having a food safety course/training, and students whose mothers were educated had significantly higher knowledge of food safety. Besides, students at higher education levels, students having a food safety course/training, and students with educated mothers displayed significantly higher odds of possessing favorable attitudes toward food safety. Similarly, female students, having a food safety course/training, students at higher education levels, and students with educated mothers were significantly associated with good practices toward food safety among students.

Conclusion

The study shows that students in Bangladesh lack knowledge of food safety and have poor practices toward food safety. For the student population of Bangladesh, more systematic and targeted food safety education and training are required.

YouTube as an information source of floating agriculture: analysis of Bengali language contents quality and viewers' interaction

Bangladesh is physically low-lying and prone to flooding, making floating agriculture an appropriate method for dealing with floods and assisting farmers in coping. This YouTube content study was conducted to investigate the quality of information found on YouTube regarding floating agriculture in Bengali language, as well as viewers' interactions to such videos. The inquiry began with a search on https://www.youtube.com for the keyword ", ভাসমান কৃষি (Floating Agriculture)," which obtained 302 results. Following that, a total of 245 contents were discarded due to their inability to fulfill the inclusion criteria. Data on likes, dislikes, views, duration, comments, publisher type, and publishing year were retrieved from videos. The quality of contents was measured by a grading methodology that took into account two aspects: i) Comprehensive aspect; and ii) Floating agriculture aspect. The Kruskal-Wallis test was used to investigate multiple comparisons (P < 0.05 considered as statistically significant). Viewers' Sentiments, emotion, and intention towards the videos were analyzed from comments. A total of 26.32% contents were of high quality, with the majority of videos released by independent publishers and the quantity of videos on an upward trend. According to floating agriculture video demographics, mean view (70816.60 ± 177319.129), mean like (818.56 ± 1992.700), mean duration (07:47 ± 06:48 min), and mean comment (18.40 ± 38.537). The amount of views, likes, and duration varied statistically significantly in relation to different content quality categories. Comments analysis revealed that the majority of the viewers' possessed positive sentiments and happy responses, whereas most of the comment was for feedback purposes. In conclusion, despite the fact that the number of high-quality videos on YouTube regarding floating agriculture was limited, viewers seem to be satisfied with those videos. This is the first paper that critically assessed the quality of floating agriculture -related YouTube videos as well as identified viewers' interaction towards those videos. This report highlights the present scenario of YouTube content regarding floating agriculture which will help content creators to produce quality videos. Understanding the viewers’ interaction would set new dimensions in policy implications regarding effective information dissemination.

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Established quality grading standards for floating agricultural contents on YouTube.

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Quantity of floating agricultural contents are on upward trend.

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Limited good-quality contents on floating agriculture are present on YouTube.

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Views, Likes, Durations can be considered to judge contents quality.

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Public possess satisfactory acceptance intensity to floating agricultural contents.

Food safety knowledge and practice of abattoir and butcher shop workers: a health risk management perspective

BACKGROUND

Meat is rich in essential proteins and valuable nutrients for human health. Despite these benefits, it is a favorable medium for microbial growth and transmission to humans unless recommended safety procedures are followed. This research aimed to assess the level of knowledge and practice of the abattoir and butcher shop workers who were working in the meat value chain.

METHODS

The cross-sectional study design, using structured questionnaire interviews was used to assess the knowledge and practice of abattoir and butcher shop workers. A total of 226 randomly selected workers were participated in this study and bivariate logistic regression was used for data analysis.

RESULTS

Of 226 total participants, 46% were abattoir workers and 54% were butcher shop workers. Majority (88.9%) of the participants did not know about meat safety and 74.3% of the participants had insufficient practices. The cumulative knowledge of both abattoir and butcher shop workers was significantly associated (p = 0.001) with their knowledge of the presence of diseases causing agents in meat, the source of meat contamination, and the common critical points of meat contamination along the meat value chain. The cumulative practice of abattoir workers was significantly associated with their practices on daily meat transporting vehicle washing (p = 0.007), reducing meat contamination (p = 0.001), duration of animal fasting before slaughter (p = 0.039), cleaning of the animal body before slaughter (p = 0.002), cleaning material used in the abattoir (p = 0.003), disposal of abattoir waste (p = 0.002), and type of biosecurity measures used (p = 0.013). Similarly, the cumulative practice of butcher shop workers was associated (p = 0.001) with their practices of attracting customers, storing remaining meat from daily sales, and measures on contaminated food. Employment of the participants was significantly associated with both the cumulative knowledge (p = 0.007) and practice (p = 0.001) of the participants while the age of the participants was associated (p = 0.001) with only their cumulative practices.

CONCLUSIONS

In general, the participants' food safety knowledge and practice were unsatisfactory. As a result, the integrated food safety policy formulation in a One Health framework, and collaborative awareness creation among different food safety stakeholders were recommended.