Resumen de Food safety at fairs and festivals: vendor knowledge and violations at a regional festival
Ji Eun Lee, Bárbara A. Almanza, Douglas C. Nelson
This 2-year study examined the food safety knowledge of food vendors at one of Indiana's largest festival, and compared it with health inspection violations at this event. ninety-four percent of nonprofit food vendors in 2006 and 100% of nonprofit food vendors in 2008 participated. Descriptive statistics, correlation matrices, and general linear models (GLM) were employed. Results for average knowledge scores were that respondents were able to correctly answer 6.16 out of 10 questions (62%) in 2006 and 10.2 out of 14 (73%) in 2008. Results from the correlations and the GLM showed that vendors serving temperature control for safety (TCS) food had significantly higher knowledge scores in 2006. Vendors' ages (p <0.05) and attendance at the educational workshop (p <0.1) impacted the vendors' knowledge scores significantly in 2008. Food safety knowledge and inspection violations were not found to be correlated. Several implications are suggested for training programs to improve vendors' food safety knowledge, and practices.
