Knowledge of food safety and hygiene and personal hygiene practices among meat handlers operating in western Romania

The purpose of this study was to determine the knowledge of food safety and hygiene and personal hygiene practices among 168 meat handlers operating in 11 meat processing units in western Romania. For this purpose a self-administered, multiple-choice questionnaire was applied, distributed and completed in May-July 2012. The meat handlers interviewed demonstrate a good level of knowledge, with a mean score of 10.34 on a scale of zero to 16, together with excellent practices with a mean score of 9.51 on a scale of zero to 12. Identification of microbiological and chemical hazards and hand hygiene, respectively, are the main deficient knowledge among those surveyed. The knowledge of study participants was significantly different according to education levels (p < 0.001) and professional training (p = 0.043) as shown by univariate non-parametric testing. In a similar way, practices differ significantly with education (p = 0.033) and meat industry professional training (p = 0.013). However, when controlling for the effect of the other variable, in the General Linear Model (GLM) framework, education is significant (p = 0.001) only in the case of knowledge and training is significant (p = 0.038) only in the case of practices. The study shows a significant positive correlation between the level of knowledge and practices of meat handlers (rs = 0.681, p < 0.001). Although the results show a good level of knowledge and practices among the meat handlers interviewed, some aspects like identification of risks to food safety and hand hygiene remain issues that need to be emphasized in training programs in the Romanian food sector.