Food Hygiene Management and Safe Food Production: An Operational Analysis of Quick Service Restaurants in Port Harcourt (Published)
Safe food production is considered as a concept of central importance because it plays an essential public health function. Unsafe food continues to be a public health problem worldwide because food borne illnesses have high prevalence locally and internationally. The objective of this study is to establish a relationship between food hygiene management and safe food production in quick service restaurants in Port Harcourt. Food hygiene management was dimensioned with personnel training, workplace design and use of personal protective equipment; while safe food production stood as standalone variable. This gave rise to three hypotheses. The cross-sectional survey of the quasi-experimental design was used to collect the data. 175 respondents returned their questionnaire copies. The data was described using frequencies and percentages while Pearson correlation statistic was used to test the hypothesis using SPSS version 21. The results showed that the dimensions of food hygiene management had significant and strong direct correlation with safe food production. Thus, it was concluded that food hygiene management is positively and significantly correlated with safe food production in quick service restaurants in Port Harcourt. Therefore, it is recommended among other things that managers of quick service restaurants in Port Harcourt should always organizes periodic staff training in order to keep members staff updated with current and safety trends in the industry.
Keywords: Personnel training, standard operating procedures., use of personal protective equipment, workplace design