Food safety behavior, attitudes and practices of street food vendors and consumers in Vietnam.

Street foods have become more popular in developing countries including Vietnam. However street food consumption has associated to higher risks of food-borne diseases. This study was conducted to investigate the food safety situation in certain districts in HoChiMinh city, Vietnam. There were three main surveys performed in this study. The first survey evaluated the food safety knowledge and attitudes of consumers and vendors by the mean of questionnaire, whilst the second part focused on observation of the food handling practices of the vendors by mean of a checklist. The last part was assessed the microbiological quality of selected street foods. A total of 40 street food vendors and 120 consumers were involved in the survey, and 71 street food samples were collected for microbiological analysis. All the surveys were conducted in four popular districts, namely District Binh Thanh, District Thu Duc, District 3 and District 8 and were based on the voluntary participation. 72.5% of the street vendors were women. The vast majority (95%) of the vendors had not received any food safety training. The surveyed consumers had adequate level of food safety knowledge and attitudes with mean score of 67 and 68, respectively. In contrast, the street vendors had poor levels of food safety knowledge and attitudes; with mean scores less than 50. The results showed that no significant difference occurred between levels of food safety knowledge of consumers on the basis of gender (p = 0.85). However, significant differences were shown in the food safety knowledge of the consumers occurred on the basis of age (p = 0), education (p = 0), food safety training status (p = 0.007) and location (district) (p = 0.004). The youngest consumers (18 and 35 years) had the highest food safety scores. With regards to the vendors, no significant differences were observed in their food safety knowledge levels on the basis of gender (p = 0.4) and age (p = 0.2). However, significant differences were found in the food safety knowledge’s of the vendors on the basis of food safety training (p = 0.04) and education level (p = 0.001). Regarding location, this study determined that the handlers in district Thu Duc had significantly (p < 0.05) the poorest food safety knowledge and attitude levels. The observation study showed that 60% of the food was prepared on site. 52.5% of the vending sites were open air without any protection from the sun, wind and dust. Evidence of iii animals and or pests/flies was observed at 62.5% the stalls evaluated. 52.5% the vending stalls had no access to potable water on-site, while 47.5% did not have adequate hand washing facilities and a further 30% lacked proper waste water and food disposal facilities. In addition, 52.5% did not separate raw, partially cooked food and cooked food products. 67.5% observed not to cover their utensils whilst 22.5% washed their utensils with clean water soapless water. These findings highlighted that vendors in HoChiMinh city generally have poor food handling practices and personal hygiene. The microbial analysis also showed that 14.1%, 2.8% and 11.3% of the samples did not satisfy the end of shelf-life criteria for ready-to-eat foods recommended by Uyttendaele et al. (2010) on the basis of their total aerobic bacteria, total anaerobic bacteria and lactic acid bacteria counts, respectively. Alarmingly 76.1% of the samples had total coliform counts above the acceptable limit for ready-to-eat foods. With regards to the pathogens, Bacillus cereus spp. were confirmed in 20 and 12.5% of the stuffed pancakes and pizza samples, respectively. The mean counts (log CFU/g) of presumed B. cereus spp. in these two products were 2.93 (±1.13) with the value ranging between 0 and 5.9 log CFU/g. Staphylococcus aureus was confirmed in 4/15 (26.7%) and 2/16 (12.5%) of the Vietnamese sandwiches and pizza samples, respectively. Escherichia coli was confirmed in 2/15 (13.3%), 4/15 (26.7%) and 3/15 (20%) of the samples of stuffed pancakes, Vietnamese sandwiches and blended juice, respectively. None of the samples were contaminated by Listeria monocytogenes. In conclusion, the results of microbial quality analysis collaborated the results of the surveys which showed that the vendors had poor safety knowledge and attitude levels and the observation study which showed that the majority of the vendors had poor food handling practices and operated under mostly unhygienic conditions. These results should provide the Vietnamese government with more reasons to increase their current efforts at improving the safety of street foods and food safety awareness of the consumers.