Food Safety Culture from The Perspective of The School Food Service in Malaysia

Abstract

Foodborne illness outbreaks associated with food produce suggest a focus on food safety culture within food safety management systems throughout food supply chains would benefit the school food service industry. The recent presence of food safety culture in food hygiene standards will drive the need for better understanding, integration into business activities, and monitoring, to help ease foodborne incidents in school food service industry. The purpose of this review was to identify definitions of food safety culture and methods of measuring its performance in the context of the Malaysia school food service industry. Investigation of how to better apply and integrate a positive food safety culture into existing food safety management systems was conducted. A roadmap for food safety culture improvement in Malaysia school food service is presented, highlighting the challenges and opportunities. Food safety culture can be developed by using feedback from regular culture assessments that identify weaknesses and opportunities for improvement, leading to increased knowledge, alignment of attitudes, and better food safety and hygiene behavior. Overall, the development of measurement tools specific to school food service operations would be beneficial. Despite unpredicted challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic, the Malaysia school food service industry continues to investigate the effectiveness of its food safety management.