An overview of food safety knowledge and practices in selected schools in the city of Al Ain, United Arab Emirates

Abstract

Safe food handling in school canteens is an important practice to protect the students from food borne illnesses. The main purpose of this study was to present an overview of food safety knowledge and hygienic practices in selected schools in Al Ain city in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The study consisted of three parts. The first part tackled students' and teachers' behavior during breakfast snack in addition to a quick assessment of premises from a food safety point of view. The second part focused on food safety knowledge and practices among students and teachers while the third part dealt with assessment of microbiological contamination of food contact surfaces and hands of students, teachers and food handlers. Results showed that only four school out of eight (50%) keep foods at 5°C or below. With respect to cleanliness of refrigerators, six out of eight schools visited (75%) do not clean their refrigerators enough. For personal hygiene, it was observed that 37.5% of respondents do not wash their hands properly after using toilet. This behavior may expose students to bacterial food poisoning such as salmonella and staphylococcus, which result into vomiting and severe abdominal pain. For the second part, results showed that 60.3% of respondents eat their meal in school playground. Utilization of playground for eating and physical activity simultaneously may expose the area to more dust, which serves as a potential source of contamination. For the microbiological evaluation of surfaces and hands of students and food handlers, the study revealed that although the general microbiological conditions were normal, the presence of Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus on hands of students, food handlers and even teachers was worrying. In survey questionnaire to assess food safety knowledge, 87% of the participants expressed their appreciation of the importance of food safety.

Self-reported food safety knowledge and practices of early-school-aged children – a result of analysis in towns near the Warsaw city

“…A selected group of early-schoolaged Polish children showed high accuracy in this area, as most of them declared use soap for washing and a towel or dryer for drying. The values obtained are comparable to the other results: 84% of the respondents said they use water and soap to wash their hands (Abushelaibi et al, 2016). Głąbska et al (2020) concluded that during the COVID-19 pandemic, all the assessed hand hygiene behaviors of Polish adolescents were satisfying, but the authors emphasized that hand hygiene education is still necessary.…”

“…School children's hands are a reservoir of many microorganisms, and many authors have confirmed their presence on pupil's hands. One such microorganism is Escherichia coli (Randle et al, 2013;Abushelaibi et al, 2016), which may indicate fecal contamination because of poor hygiene after using the toilet (Curtis and Cairncross, 2003). Good hand hygiene is an important way to eliminate current pathogens from the surfaces of hands and is an effective way to fight against infection, both at home and in the food plant.…”

“…In many cases, it was found that food safety knowledge did not always correspond to food handling practices. Only a few studies have been dedicated to the youngest consumers (Wang et al, 2017;Byrd-Bredbenner et al, 2010;Kang et al, 2010;Chittleborough et al, 2012;Losasso et al, 2013;Randle et al, 2013;Abushelaibi et al, 2016). In Poland, a lot of attention has been focused on obesity, e.g.…”

Good hygiene practices in school canteens: evaluation between types of schools and administration as well as presence of technical professional

“…A study carried out in 2016 in the Ashanti region of Ghana, showed that 52% of the 180 students assessed, who ate more of their meals at school time, had FBD between 3 and 12 times per academic year (Ababio et al, 2016b). In Germany, one of the largest bouts of gastroenteritis in 2012 came from contaminated food in schools, compromising the health of 11,200 students (Aisha et al, 2016). In Brazil, this scenario is no different because, according to the Ministry of Health's Health Surveillance Secretariat, of the 12,503 FBD outbreaks that occurred between 2000 and 2017, 8.6% occurred in the school environment .…”