Food Safety knowledge and practices of Sri Lankan individual households

Abstract

Having awareness on better hygiene, health and food safety practice by the individual households is important for the healthy life style as it directly affects the incidence of many diseases prevalent in the community. Thus a cross sectional study was conducted with 121 households and a self-administered questionnaire was used to assess the respondents’ knowledge and practices concerning on food safety. Accordingly results showed that responses were in a satisfactory level related to both knowledge (mean of 74.46) and practices (mean of 74.63) but the respondents lacked relevant scientific knowledge regarding food safety. Further low Spearman’s Rho values implying that there was no significant relationship between knowledge and practices regarding several factors surveyed such as checking food labels, awareness of hand washing and proper cleaning, understanding about temperature danger zone and the temperature inside the refrigerator.