Food Safety in School Footpath Stall

Abstract

Problem: Footpath stalls around 2 primary and 2 secondary schools with adjacent walls in Surin municipally lacked standard food safety due to conflicts among the school, vendors, and municipal hygiene officers. As a consequence! about 1,500 students had unexamined foods. Stalls selling clean food may give an opportunity to contamination food and diseases causing illness in consumers.
Objective: Having standard stalls and creation of a logo indicating hygiene of both the stall and food quality.
Research method: Participatory action research.
Target group: The owners of 106 school footpath stalls.
Research Operation: A meeting of the working group was held to determine the hygienic standard, the training course, the evaluation and the logo that would be used. A survey of the stalls was done before inviting the venders to participate in the training course that would give the participants knowledge as well as way to improve the hygiene of their stalls and food so as to meet the set standard and pass the evaluation. After training about 2-months, the working group evaluated the stalls according to the normal set. The logo of approved hygiening standard was given to the stall holders who passed the evaluation. In the mean time, meeting with both parents and students were held to explain them the project. The students and their parents were asked to buy food only from the approved stalls. Random reexamination of food stalls was carried out 3 times yearly.
Result: One hundred and six school footpath stalls participated in the project. Nearly half of them sold ready-made food and drink. The half of the stalls prepared food from homes. 89 vendors (83.96%) of the stall holders attended the training. After the training, they gained more points in the post-test (85.39%). On the result of the evaluation according to the set standard, it was found that 100 stalls (94.34%) passed the evaluation. On the random food samples examination for contamination, 14% of food was found contaminated before the framing, contrary to only 1% after the training.
Conclusion: The working group had created a logo-Safe School Footpath Stall, as well as the participatory operation so that the students and their parents could have safe and hygiening food from the standard stalls.
Suggestion: Continuity, development and expanding of knowledge on food safety to others school
Key words: Participatory learning, Food safety in school.