Assessment of food safety knowledge and practices in a sample of university of tripoli students

Abstract EN

Although Food safety is a public health issue and has been widely discussed for many years.

However, food poisoning continues to occur among different community groups and may be related to the level of their food safety knowledge and practices.

The study aimed to evaluate food safety knowledge and practices in a random sample of 785 students of university of Tripoli.

The survey was carried out by the face-to-face questionnaire which was prepared for this purpose.

The questionnaire consisted of three parts; the first: questions about food safety knowledge, the second part: questions about food safety practices.

The third part: personal information.

The students were randomly selected from different faculties to answer the questionnaire.

The sample included 323 males (41.1%) and 462 females (58.9%).

The results showed that a large percentage of students (77.7%) had a good level of knowledge of food safety.

The mean of the food safety knowledge scores of the respondents was 20.14 ± 3.761.

The results also showed that more than half of the university students (430) had a high level of food safety practices (54.8%).

The mean of food safety practices score of the respondents was 45.10 ± 7.308.

The results of this study showed a significant association between the age and gender of the responding students and the scores of food safety knowledge while, there was a significant association (P‹ 0.05) between sex and source of information on food safety and food safety practices (P‹ 0.05).

The results also showed insignificant small, positive linear correlation between food safety knowledge and practices of the students (P‹ 0.05).

The findings of the study show that although there is a good level of food safety awareness and a higher than moderate level of food safety practices, there is a need to raise the level at some points where the students' responses were wrong and improving some improper practices.