An Assessment of Mobile Food Facilities Handler Knowledge

Includes bibliographical references (pages 34-38).The popularity of mobile food facilities has steadily grown over the last few years. Safe food management practices are essential in food operations since employee knowledge can reduce mishandling of food that can cause foodborne illnesses. Food safety education is associated with a decrease in risky food handling practices by food workers. This study was conducted to evaluate mobile food facility service workers food safety knowledge and the association with behavior that has the potential to cause foodborne illness. Twelve hundred and eighty-two voluntary surveys of worker knowledge resulted in a significantly higher mean score (64%) for restaurant food workers than for five hundred and thirty-nine mobile food facility service workers (60%), surveys taken in Spanish (50%) had lower mean scores than English surveys scores (64%) and men (60%) scored higher than women (57%). No food handling education (54% & 64%) had the lowest mean score and the 3 hour food handler card (58% & 67%) had the lowest mean score when compared to other food handler training. Limitations to the study were that it was on a voluntary basis to take survey and the survey was not performed at random