Gebeyehu Daniel Teshome, Tsegaye Habtam
School of Veterinary Medicine, Wollo University, Dessie, Amhara, Ethiopia.
One Health Outlook. 2022 Aug 28;4(1):14. doi: 10.1186/s42522-022-00070-1.
Meat is rich in essential proteins and valuable nutrients for human health. Despite these benefits, it is a favorable medium for microbial growth and transmission to humans unless recommended safety procedures are followed. This research aimed to assess the level of knowledge and practice of the abattoir and butcher shop workers who were working in the meat value chain.
The cross-sectional study design, using structured questionnaire interviews was used to assess the knowledge and practice of abattoir and butcher shop workers. A total of 226 randomly selected workers were participated in this study and bivariate logistic regression was used for data analysis.
Of 226 total participants, 46% were abattoir workers and 54% were butcher shop workers. Majority (88.9%) of the participants did not know about meat safety and 74.3% of the participants had insufficient practices. The cumulative knowledge of both abattoir and butcher shop workers was significantly associated (p = 0.001) with their knowledge of the presence of diseases causing agents in meat, the source of meat contamination, and the common critical points of meat contamination along the meat value chain. The cumulative practice of abattoir workers was significantly associated with their practices on daily meat transporting vehicle washing (p = 0.007), reducing meat contamination (p = 0.001), duration of animal fasting before slaughter (p = 0.039), cleaning of the animal body before slaughter (p = 0.002), cleaning material used in the abattoir (p = 0.003), disposal of abattoir waste (p = 0.002), and type of biosecurity measures used (p = 0.013). Similarly, the cumulative practice of butcher shop workers was associated (p = 0.001) with their practices of attracting customers, storing remaining meat from daily sales, and measures on contaminated food. Employment of the participants was significantly associated with both the cumulative knowledge (p = 0.007) and practice (p = 0.001) of the participants while the age of the participants was associated (p = 0.001) with only their cumulative practices.
In general, the participants' food safety knowledge and practice were unsatisfactory. As a result, the integrated food safety policy formulation in a One Health framework, and collaborative awareness creation among different food safety stakeholders were recommended.
肉类富含对人体健康至关重要的蛋白质和宝贵营养成分。尽管有这些益处，但除非遵循推荐的安全程序，否则它是微生物生长及传播给人类的有利媒介。本研究旨在评估肉类价值链中屠宰场和肉铺工人的知识水平与实践情况。
采用横断面研究设计，通过结构化问卷调查访谈来评估屠宰场和肉铺工人的知识与实践情况。总共226名随机选取的工人参与了本研究，并使用二元逻辑回归进行数据分析。
在226名总参与者中，46%是屠宰场工人，54%是肉铺工人。大多数（88.9%）参与者不了解肉类安全，74.3%的参与者实践不足。屠宰场和肉铺工人的累积知识与他们对肉类中致病因子的存在、肉类污染来源以及肉类价值链中肉类污染的常见关键点的了解显著相关（p = 0.001）。屠宰场工人的累积实践与他们日常肉类运输车辆清洗的实践（p = 0.007）、减少肉类污染（p = 0.001）、屠宰前动物禁食时长（p = 0.039）、屠宰前动物身体清洁（p = 0.002）、屠宰场使用的清洁材料（p = 0.003）、屠宰场废物处理（p = 0.002）以及所采用的生物安全措施类型（p = 0.013）显著相关。同样，肉铺工人的累积实践与他们吸引顾客的实践（p = 0.001）、储存每日销售剩余肉类的实践以及对受污染食品的措施相关。参与者的就业情况与参与者的累积知识（p = 0.007）和实践（p = 0.001）均显著相关，而参与者的年龄仅与他们的累积实践相关（p = 0.001）。
总体而言，参与者的食品安全知识和实践情况不尽人意。因此，建议在“同一个健康”框架下制定综合食品安全政策，并在不同食品安全利益相关者之间开展协作性的宣传活动。
