ABSTRACT
Unsafe food resulting from poor handling, processing and storage remains the major cause of foodborne illnesses among rural dwellers. This study assessed the food safety practices’ usage among rural households’ in Edo State, Nigeria. Specifically, the study described the socio economic characteristics of rural households, their awareness, access to and preference for sources of information, usage of, attitude to and constraints to use of food safety practices.
A total of 235 respondents were randomly selected from six (6) LGAs in Edo State. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire administered through interview schedule. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics: means, frequency counts and percentages while correlation and t-test was used for test of hypotheses.
The results show that rural households’ food handlers were mostly females 78.8% with an average age of 41years. About 62% of rural households have at least primary education. Most were aware of hand washing with soap and water before handling food 97%, use of clean and safe water for cooking 99.0%. Some of the respondent have access to food safety information through friends, family and relations 37% and had these as their most preferred source of information followed by extension agent 26%. Some respondents showed a strong agreement to hand washing as a way to prevent infection 44% and adopted it[u1] , also about 44% of the respondents agreed to the necessity of reheating left over food, meanwhile about 39% were not used to placing utensils for raw and cooked food separately. The identified constraints to usage of food safety practices in the study area include inadequate finance, unstable supply of electricity and poor waste disposal facilities. It is recommended that an empowerment program/training to enhance rural households’ productivity and profitability should be encouraged by extension advisory to help increase the financial status of rural dwellers in order to facilitate their usage of food safety practices.
[u1]You captured only hand washing among all the practices for a topic on usage. Include some key practices adopted/used or not
