RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FOOD SAFETY KNOWLEDGE AND HYGIENE PRACTICES OF STREET FOOD VENDORS IN TRA VINH CITY

The objective of this study is to explore the relationship between the current food safety knowledge of street food vendors and their hygiene practices in Tra Vinh city. Fifty street food vendors were randomly selected and the survey was conducted using a face-to-face interview method through the questionnaire. The results showed evidence of a slight relationship between the food safety knowledge of the street food vendors and their hygiene practices (r = 0.27, p > 0.05).  Based on the demographic information, the education might be the most important factor for a better understanding of the variability of the food safety  knowledge (F = 3.54, p < 0.05), but not that of the hygiene practices (F = 0.78, p > 0.05). Until recently, the training of food safety knowledge has been conducted with the expectation that street food vendors would prepare and store food safely in case they would have adequate food safety and hygiene knowledge.  However, our study shows that the current training way has not been effective due to the fact that the behavior of street food vendors who were trained was not different from the behavior of street food vendors who were not trained