A review on street stall food handlers to apply food safety / Nor Fatihah Sudin and Norsil Awati Mustakim

These studies explain the role of food handlers in ensuring the practice of food safety and critically discuss the push and pull factors influencing food safety practices among the street stall food handlers. In this study, hawkers are the main focus for measuring the level of food safety awareness. Food hawker is a person who operates their food stall along the road side, parking lot and other stream center. In Malaysian, the time constrain for most working people to prepare meals for themselves were arise because of the demand for food consumption in multiple from foodservice establishment, demand of ready to eat food and the trend of eating out among Malaysian. Due to the crowd locations of the operation, it will generate the unsafe situation for the food at their stall. In general, food handlers already have the knowledge about the food handling but they are not concern to fully implement that practices and some of the hawkers were not compliance to the hygiene and sanitation of their premises which placed the people at risk of food borne outbreak. Correct knowledge is necessary but knowledge alone is not powerful enough until it was applied. Food borne outbreak has been connected with microorganisms like bacteria, fungi and parasites. The food safety practices were needed in its implementation to reduce the disease related to food borne. The awareness on food safety practices among hawkers or food handlers become significant to consumer in getting the safe food. Government becomes a pull factor in ensuring the implementation of the standard food safety by encouraging food handler to attend the food handling courses. These will give benefits to them in obtaining a license for their premises besides they will grab the knowledge from these courses. Thus, food handler will be more exposed to their actual role in keeping the food prepared is safe, the good and bad practices that have been review and other advantages of the food handling courses.