Food safety knowledge among cadets of Military Academy in Republic of Serbia

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the level of food safety knowledge among cadets of Military Academy in the Republic of Serbia. For that purpose, a structured, self-administrative questionnaire was designed and used to assess the level of food handling practices and food safety knowledge. In total, 120 cadets were involved in the study. For each participating cadet, the food handling practice score (FHPS) and food safety knowledge score (FSKS) was calculated by dividing the sum of correct answers by the total number of correct responses. Additionally, knowledge gaps were identified for each question. Our results indicated that on the average FHPS among Serbian cadets was 44.5%, while FSKS was 50.5%. Female cadets showed better scores compared to males, although this was not statistically significant. Better FHPS scores were determined among cadets living with parents (48.7%), compared to cadets living with roommates (43.6%, p≤0.05), while an opposite was determined for FSKS. In total, 95.8% of cadets apply good practice of hand hygiene before preparing food, 90.8% of them knew that is not safe to consume food when the shelf-life is expired, and 89.2% knew that the opened sterilized milk should not be stored outside the refrigerator. Also, 91.7% of cadets knew that content of blown can is not safe for the consumption. Almost 64.2% of all cadets could successfully make association between meat and Trichinella, while merely 27.5% of them knew that Escherichia coli O157 is the most important pathogen for raw minced meat, and only 13.3% of cadets knew that Listeria monocytogenes is associated with ready-to-eat meat products. Finally, only 10% of cadets knew that Campylobacter is food-borne pathogen mostly associated with raw and undercooked chicken meat. Also, our cadets were not aware that color, smell or appearance of food would not give any indication of food contamination, as only 6.7% of cadets knew this. Results obtained in this study pointed out some food safety areas which need further improvement via educational program, but also via media and internet courses, material or short clips