ISSN: 2474-9222
Authors: Urgesa T*
Food safety refers to the situations and practices that prevent contamination of food with unwholesome chemicals or microbes, and remains a serious public health concern worldwide. Food-borne diseases have been known as a major human health problem occurring commonly in both developed and underdeveloped countries, particularly in African countries, because of unhygienic handling of food and poor sanitation practices. A descriptive cross sectional study was conducted from November 2021 to April 2022 in and around Babich and Gedo towns, West Shewa Zone, Oromia, Ethiopia. This study aims to assess knowledge, attitudes and practices of meat handlers at homes and slaughterhouses regarding food safety of beef. To address these objectives 160 meat handlers at homes, 9 slaughter personnel were participated as sample respondents. Semistructured questionnaires and visual observation were used to collect data and the data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) software version 20. Descriptive statistics such as tabulation, frequency, percentage and mean were used to analyze the survey data collected from respondents. The overall result of meat handlers at homes showed that their knowledge, attitude and practices of beef safety were 56.8%, 45.4% and 60.1%, respectively, which were below the acceptable level. The overall knowledge, attitude and beef safety practices of slaughter personnel were 56.67%, 68.15% and 42.86%, respectively, which were also below the acceptable level. This study found that meat handlers generally had low levels of knowledge, attitudes, and practices related to food safety. This is mainly because of lack of training, poor structured slaughter facilities, improper waste and environmental management system. To improve meat safety through regular training of all actors along the meat chain on safe meat handling as well as general and personal hygiene requires great attention.
Keywords: Babich; Beef; Ethiopia; Gedo; Meat Safety
