Food Safety, Hygiene Practices and Consumer Choice of Food Vendors in Tertiary Institutions in Abia State, Nigeria

Abstract

The paper the influence of food safety and hygiene practices on consumer choice of food vendors in tertiary institution in Abia State, Nigeria. Specifically, the study is to determine the standard of food safety and hygiene practices among food vendors in the study area and the influence of environment on consumer choice of food vendors in the study area. Two research objective guided the study and one hypothesis. Structured questionnaire and observational checklist were used to assess the food safety and hygiene practices among food vendors. The study population comprises of all the registered food vendors and consumers of the selected tertiary institutions in Abia State. Convenience sampling techniques was adopted for the study. A sample size of 260 registered food vendors and 196 consumers were adopted for the study. Descriptive statistics such as frequencies, percentages and means were used to analyze demographic variables and research questions, while multiple regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 significant level. Findings revealed that environment, location, price, quality of food among others are some of the factors that influences consumers’ choice of food vendors. Management of tertiary instructions should sensitize, train and retrain food vendors on preparing and serving a healthy food to consumers. Disciplinary measures should be put in place to ensure strict adherence to standard food safety and hygiene practices in these institutions.