A survey of sanitation management practices of school food ingredients manufacturing company workers in Daegu and Gyeongbuk province

The purpose of this study was to investigate factory workers' knowledge of sanitation management of school foodstuffs and sanitation practices. A questionnaire that identified employees' food safety sanitation management knowledge and practices was developed based on a review of literature. Subjects consisted of 221 factory workers employed at 34 factories in the Daegu and Gyeongbuk areas. Almost half of the factory workers were 40~49 years of age (45.7%), 34.8% had 1~3 years of work experience, 62.4% of the respondents received food safety education 1~2 times a month and 75.1% of the respondents were satisfied with sanitation education. However, the total score for factory worker sanitation knowledge was low: 4.63/9. Sanitation performance was self-evaluated using a Likert 5-point scale. The total mean score for the factory workers' sanitation performance was 4.63/5. Satisfaction level and the amount of sanitation education, application of sanitation knowledge, attitude regarding sanitation management, and sanitation management performance level were significantly high among workers employed in a HACCP certification facility (p<0.05). The difficulties were found to be sanitation management and the time to deliver food to schools. To instill a sense of duty and pride among workers and to ensure that the food suppliers provide best-quality school foodstuffs safely, school dietitians and factory managers must actively educate workers in safe food handling and sanitation.