ASSESSMENT OF FOOD HANDLING PROCEDURES IN MANSOURA UNIVERSITY HOSTELS

Abstract

scares have led to call for better hygiene and quality practices. In the last few years, there have been a large number of cases of poisoning among students in university hostels, such as at Al-Azhar University. Food handling personnel are assumed to be responsible for most illnesses as a result of poor handling behavior at hostels. Food poisoning outbreaks of salmonella typhi, listeria monocytogenes and e-coli bacteria have made the students more skeptical of the food they eat. In university hostels, food handling procedures should be practiced by the correct and safely way during flow of food. This research aims to assess food handling procedures in Mansoura university hostels. To achieve this objective, a food safety observation checklist was developed and adopted on six hostels from seven in Mansoura (one of them has been closed for maintenance during the period from March 2017 to June 2017) to identify to what extent the correct food handling procedures are followed. The list included sixty- three attributes covering receiving, storing, preparation, cooking, holding packaging ,transportation, pests control and food service process. For the observation checklist, a five point likert scale was used to evaluate the sub-attributes(Always- Often-Sometimes-Rarely-Never). The results of the research indicated that some of the investigated hostels often follow correctly food safety practices . Upon the research findings some recommendations were suggested to improve food handling procedures in the investigated university hostels such as; application of food safety practices during the food handling procedures, maintenance of equipments especially for the receiving process and establishing a separate department for food quality control within each university hostels.