KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICE OF FOOD HYGIENE AMONG FOODVENDORS IN KEFFI, NASARAWA STATE NIGERIA AND ITSIMPLICATION ON THEIR BUSINESS

ABSTRACTThe high rate of food borne diseases have become a matter of public health concern with itsresultant effect of increasing morbidity and mortality across the general population. Some of thecases of foodborne illness are traceable to pathogens from contaminated food and waterconsumption mostly at food vending sites. Street vended foods have become a booming businessboth in developed and developing countries mainly due to cost and convenience. This study wasconducted to evaluate the Knowledge and Practice of food hygiene among food vendors in Keffi,North Central Region, Nigeria. The study engaged descriptive survey design and the populationof the study was 586 food vendors in Keffi metropolis. The study through simple random samplingtechnique, adopted the use of self-structured questionnaire and interviews as the instrument fordata collection. The data collected were analyzed using frequency counts and percentage.Findings of the study reveals that most food vendors in Keffi were female and persons whose ageranged between 21 and 40 years, with mainly secondary school education (71.0%) formed the bulk(66.0%) of person involved in this form of venture. The results from this study indicated that thefood vendors in this study had poor knowledge of food safety and hygiene as their knowledge oftransmission of food borne diseases, personal hygiene, contamination and cross- contaminationas well as temperature regulations for food were inadequate. The level of practice of food hygienewas also observed to be inadequate. To reduce the incidences of foodborne diseases, this studyrecommended that proper monitoring and evaluation of the activities of food vendors should beconducted by officials of the Environmental and Public health departments of the local councilauthorities and regular training programmes should be conducted for food vendors to improvetheir knowledge of food safety and hygiene as well as proper food handing processes andprocedures. This will ultimately improve their business and enhance the business administrationability. Keywords: Business; Contaminant; Disinfection; Establishment; Food-Hygiene INTRODUCTIONFood vendors are known to provide ready-made meals that are relatively affordable, easilyaccessible in unconventional places for the marginal people in developing countries. As stated byDeWaal and Rober (2023), the act of food vending has become a booming business and a sourceof daily income for a good number of people especially in developing countries. In the face ofunabating unemployment and economic downturn in most developing countries, many youngpeople especially women have joined the bandwagon of food vendors basically for survival. Mostof these people do not have basic training in food safety and hygiene which has become a majorissue in recent times.