COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF THE SANITARY CONDITIONS OF SOME FOOD SERVICE JOINTS (A CASE STUDY IN THE TAMALE METROPOLIS)

Abstract

Food vending in the country is very vital as it provides nutritional needs of its population and at the same time serves as a source of revenue for the operators of these service joints. Tamale in the northern region is not left out as so many women are into the business of food vending which is their source of livelihood; nevertheless, food vending poses much risk to consumers of these foods due to bad sanitary practices in some food service joints. This study seeks to make a comparative assessment of the sanitary conditions of some food service joints in Tamale metropolis which sought to; identify waste disposal practices, assessment of food hygiene practices and assessment of the level of personal hygiene. The different types of food service joints surveyed in the study include; Restaurants, chop bars and roadside food joints. Questionnaires and face to face interview were used in acquiring information from respondents. A total of 120 respondents were interviewed, out of which 90 were customers, 21 being staff of the food service joints, 9 managers of the food service joints. Information from some key informants at the environmental regulatory bodies was equally taken. The results revealed differences in general hygiene practices between the types of food service joints. Roadside foods are mostly purchased by customers who have not attained formal education and those customers with primary, JHS and secondary education were fairly represented across the three types of food service joints. Customers with tertiary education patronise food from both restaurants and chop bars whilst customers who have schooled above tertiary (post graduates) mainly patronise food from restaurants. Sanitary regulations by environmental regulatory bodies is found to be very poor at the Roadside food joints which is evident by the fact that all these joints are not licenced but is fairly good at the Restaurants and Chop bars understudy.