Knowledge and practice in food safety processes - a case study on Hungarian school catering

Abstract

Providing the population with safe and quality food is an important objective all over the world. The healthy childhood nutrition and diet will determine the health state of children in their adult age; therefore, it will influence the future economic and social performance of the society. As children spend most of their time in educational institutions, school catering programs have become the focus of public attention all over the world. This paper introduces the Hungarian school catering system based upon the results of an overall food safety survey. The results of our researches showed that food safety level of the different kitchen units is mostly determined by the level of food processing activities and less by the technical-technological level of the school kitchens. According to our results, improving the knowledge and the attitudes of the employees in the school kitchens is more important than the technical-technological conditions.