Food safety and hygiene practices followed by street food vendors of vadodara city

The street food denotes to a wide-ranging variety of ready-to eat foods and beverages which are prepared and sold in public places. The food borne diseases are one of the public health issues which may arise from poor food handling and sanitation practices. The unhygienic food preparation conditions and handling of street food results in possible health risk. Here the street food vendors play a role in ensuring and maintaining the food safety and hygiene throughout the cycle of production, processing, serving and disposal. Hence, this research work was conducted to find out the food storage facilities in and around food stall and to observe the hygienic practices followed by the street food vendors while preparation and serving of food. The data were gathered through questionnaire on a sample of 60 street food vendors (10 from each six locales of Vadodara city) selected through purposive random sampling method. Descriptive and relational statistics was used for presenting the results. The findings of the study revealed that the food stalls had good facilities in and around their food stalls and the vendors followed hygiene practices while preparation and serving of food. It was also found that the environment around food stall was not clean and storage of food items was not good. A significant relationship was found between the environment around food stall storage facilities at the stall. The number of employees working at the food stall was dependent on the total monthly income of the family and duration of opening the stall. The findings of the study would provide feedback for the public, street food vendors and government. The government should take some steps to provide street food vendors infrastructure where they can prepare food in clean and hygienic environment and also train them.