Food Hygiene

In this photo, we see a typical roast meat seller on the streets. Look at the picture.  What do you see? I see slices of meat cut in cube sizes, roasted and sold to people. What you may not see is how the meat is sliced, selected by buyers and sold. If you want to know how seasoned, delicious or yummy the food in this bucket taste, please don’t ask me.

Perhaps, the man standing in this photo can tell us the taste of the meat. What I have seen is that buyers are given tooth picks; buyer(s) bend over the zinc carts, and poked at several pieces of the meat. After making selection, the buyer(s)  will remain standing over the meat cart and devour the piece or pieces of meat.

You may want to ask, “So what if they stand over opened cart, talking and selecting the piece(s) of meat of meat? Well, food safety and food hygiene dictates that personal hygiene practices and cleanliness must minimize the risk of food contamination, including: not eating over unprotected food or surfaces likely to come in contact with food so as to avoid saliva and other body fluids from getting into food; do whatever is reasonable to prevent their body, anything from their body, coming into contact with food; wear clean outer clothing, depending on the type of work they do; not sneeze, blow or cough over unprotected food.

To avoid the unsafe food handling and poor hygiene, government institutions responsible for Food Safety and Hygiene must take immediate steps to put a stop to these unsafe food practices. These unsafe practices can result to the spread of diseases, including TB, Typoid Fever, lasser fever, among other illnesses. Measures must be put in place to ensure food and drinks sold on the streets, and in food bars and restaurants are safe for consumption.

Photo/Text: Musue Haddad