Abstract

Aim: The study was aimed to analyze the food safety practices (FSP) awareness and utilization among street food hawkers in Delta State, Nigeria.

Materials and Methods: A multistage sampling procedure was used. One hundred and five vendors were randomly selected through structured questionnaire. The analytical tools applied were descriptive statistics, likert types and regression analysis.

Results: The results revealed mean household size of 5 persons with 73.3% married. About 68.3% of vendors lacks food safety knowledge with only 31.7% in the affirmative of knowledge. The findings showed that 75% of vendors had not attended training with only 25% that undergone food safety training. About 58.3% of the hawkers were stationary vending type with mean income of N120, 411.43k. The majority food welfare practices aware were safeguarding flies from food, cleanliness of environment, covering oneself, clean water availability, checking label, reheating food and storing in hotspot. The awareness index was 80.2% while the utilization index was 63.3%. The regression result revealed that education, awareness and training influence utilization of safety practices. The outcome of the hypothesis showed that age, gender and education of vendors were significantly correlated with their level of awareness.

Conclusion: It was concluded that if adequately measures are taken to check the food safety practices and utilization with more awareness on its importance, it would create an avalanche for the street food vending market in Nigeria.

Statistics