Risk based observational assessment of consumer food safety behavior and implications for food safety education

摘要

Worldwide incidence of foodborne disease has increased in recent years and data suggest that inadequate food handling behavior in the domestic environment may be an important factor. Most consumer studies have examined knowledge of food safety or self reported food safety practices. The aim of this research project was to determine actual food safety behaviors and develop a risk based scoring system to quantitatively assess specific actions. An observational approach was used to record consumers' food safety practices. Specific food handling practices were scored according to the risk of actions and risk of foods handled. Results will be discussed in terms of repeatability of food handling practices, consistency of very high, high and low risk actions and reproducibility of specific high-risk practices. Results indicate no significant difference between the overall risk scores obtained or number of specific risk actions following repeated preparation of the same meal. Variation of risk score increased with complexity of the meal and more complex meals resulted in significantly higher risk scores (p=<0.05). Results suggest that important food handling practices may be habitual.