Utilisation of Rules for Safe Food Preparation in Niger State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study examined the utilization of rules for safe food preparations by food sellers in urban and semi-urban centres of Niger State, Nigeria. Two stage sampling procedures were used to select 120 respondents for the study. Validated interview schedule with reliability coefficient of 0.77 was used for data collection and data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and t-test. Findings showed that the mean age of the respondents in the respective centres were 41 and 44 years. While majority of the respondents were not members of food sellers associations with 69.2% and 80.0% response rates respectively. Awareness on rules for safe food preparation was higher in urban centres than in the semi-urban centres. However, the utilization of these rules for food preparation across the two centres was low. Challenges to the utilizations of the rules for safe food preparations were un-affordability of storage facility, high cost of disinfectants/detergents and inadequate complementary services. The Result of the t-test showed significant difference (t=3.679) in the level of awareness in the two centres, but there was no significant difference (t=0.310) in the utilization of the rules in the two centres. Therefore, it was recommended that regulatory agencies responsible for enforcing the rules should create more awareness and ensure full compliance to the rules by food sellers through regular visits and monitoring. It was also suggested that Government, Non-Governmental Organisations and stakeholders should assist the food sellers with disinfectants/detergents and storage facilities inform of loans at highly subsidized rates, in order to motivate them to adhere to the critical rules for safe food preparation.