Food-borne illnesses
Food-borne illnesses are described to be among the most prevalent problems being faced by the current world, and the said cases have increased significantly. The latest rise in occurrence of certain food-borne infections has been said to be due to various factors which include, the population growth, change in behaviours of preparing food, increased eating of food away from home, rapid urbanization, and nonexistence of food safety teaching and education amongst food handlers and buyers. Majority of the food outbreaks have shown that it results from inappropriate malpractices during the preparation of food in small businesses, homes and other food places for human consumption.
According to the Dictionary of business, attitude can be described as atendency to respond either positively or negatively towards a certain idea, object, person, or situation. Attitude is a great influence on an individual’s choice of action and responses to challenges, incentives, and rewards. In general,it is termed as a response to stimuli. This is the force that allows one to enjoy what they do as they do if they embrace positivity as they tackle the challenges they face on the day to day activities. Attitude is the manner in which one thinks and reply to all things in life. It’s a temper,an opinion,a sensation, and it causesimpact toevery aspect in our day to day activities. So, it certainly creates an effect on the work of a crucial part of our lives.If you possess an attitude that is positive, then you’re good&flexible in anytransformation, and you can always make the best of it. But if at all you have a negative attitude, then it may mean it’s your end.
Someone’s attitude towards a particular idea can be measured or determined. Perhaps the most direct way of determining someone’s attitude is through asking them some questions. Attitude is regarded to be related to one’s self-image and their social acceptance to an idea. In order to preserve the positivity, people would always not tell the truth about how they feel but would frame it in a way that is acceptable socially. Due to this problem, several methods of measuring and determining attitude have been established, but all of them have specific forms of limitation. The measures focus on different components of the attitudes, for instance, the affective and behavioural components. These components do not necessarily coincide. These methods include direct measurements which give an evaluation of how one thinks negatively or positively about a topic, how powerful; the topic is and the kind of activity the topic is all about and the indirect method of measurement which typically involves the use of projective tests by presenting to someone an unclear picture of words and determining their responses, for example, psychological responses which measure their reaction, nonobtrusive behavior, disguised procedures and projective techniques.
The dimension of attitude towards a particular idea can also be determined through some factors. These factors include; Attitude Strength-these are the attitudes that are strongly held and that greatly influence behavior. Attitudes that are imperative to an individual tend to be strong. Attitudes that people have a bestowed interest in also tend to be firm. Furthermore, people tend to have robust attitudes about things, ideas, events or individuals they have considerable knowledge and information about. Accessibility of the attitude- this refers to the ease in which the idea rings a bell in one’s mind. In general, extremely accessible attitudes are believed to be stronger. Attitude Ambivalence-which refers to the proportion of negative and positive assessment that often make up the attitude of someone. The ambivalence of an attitude rises as the positive and negative assessments get more and more equal.
When foodstuff is made on a large scale, in homes and home-based businesses, it may be held by many personsand thus causing an increase in the possibilities of contagion of the final foodstuff. Unintentionalinfection of food duringcooking, leading to food-borne disease occurrences can causea threat to the well-being of buyers and cause economic problems to thestates. Generally, the food handlers of the institutions have suitableawareness about the requirements for the safety of food, but this does not translate into stern sanitation practices during the handling and processing of the foodstuffs. Various conclusions and studies on food safety have indicated that the education level, working experience, and safe food handling are a significant determinant. Those who have received formal education have better ways of hygienic food handling.
Studies have shown that food handlers in food environs habitually lack knowledge with respect to basic food hygiene and that carelessness and ignorance often result in poor hygiene which may have consequences for both food distributors and users. Inadequate food cooking and failure to keep the cleanliness of hands, protective wear and preparation surfaces, as well as failure to take the necessary protections when injuries and illnesses have occurred, are behavioural aspects which are underlining factors while controlling food sanitation. Individual hygiene is the most effective way of achieving food hygiene. The hands of the employees in the foodservice sector may be the key courses in the spread of diseases as a result of poor individual sanitation and cross-contamination. An employee may cause contamination to his/her hands when using the latrine, or germs may be spread from uncooked meat to a salad by the hands of a food handler.
The incidences of illnesses caused by food contamination are reduced mainly and are determined by the attitudes of the handlers of the food towards the enactment of food safety guidelines and regulation. Thus there is a robustrelationship between positive conduct, education of food handlers and attitudes in upholding practices.A positive attitude is a means of reducing poor food handling. In home-based businesses, the supervision of food protection within the sector should conduct food hygiene teaching as a way of reducing the occurrences of food-borne illnesses whilst making some recommendations.
The education and training of the handlersof food necessitate that they are supervised and instructed corresponding with their work activities. The kind of training may be computer-based, classroom-based, or may not have been accredited formally.
However, in spite of the fact that the result of numerous studies reporting that food safety training instils knowledge on the staff, it does not generally roll out a positive improvement in the behavior of handling food. This majorly depends upon the person’s attitude towards the training and execution of the behavior at the work environment. This data is usually collected at the training times, and little work has been attempted to look at how much the handlers effectively apply the activity of the training environment once they are back in the work environment. Assessment is required so as to improve future projects and to eradicate those projects which are not effective