| dc.description.abstract | Globally, meat remains one of the highly and easily contaminable foods in the world, raising food safety concerns in different countries especially developing countries like Uganda hence a quantitative cross sectional study was carried out among 34 butcheries in Katwe/Butego Sub-county, Masaka district to assess the knowledge ,attitude and practices of butchers towards food safety as well as to establish relationship between socio demographic characteristics of butchers and their KAP levels , Purposive sampling was used to select study respondents. Data was collected using semi-structured questionnaires developed from reviewed literature, entered in excel for cleaning and exported to SPSS version 14.0 for analysis. Data was analyzed as per study objectives and presented in form of tables and figures. Majority of study respondents 64.7% (22/34) were married, half 55.9% (19/34) stopped in primary and over third 35.3% (12/34) never received food safety training by the time of the study. Majority 94.1% (32/34) of the respondents didn’t know the correct temperature of storing perishable foods. Less than a third 29.4% (10/34) had high knowledge on food safety. Over half 58.8% (20/34) had negative attitudes towards food safety and less than a third 32.4% (11/34) had good practices regarding food safety. On bivariate analysis between the outcomes (knowledge, attitudes and practices) with socio-demographic characteristics of study respondents, participants’ education level and age were found to be significantly associated with KAP levels. Study respondents who reached in secondary [COR=1.18, CI=1.04-6.86, P-value=0.03] were 1.18 times more likely to have good attitude towards food safety as compared to those who stopped at primary level at 95% confidence interval. Study respondents who were over 35 years [COR=1.15, CI=1.03-3.91, P-value-0.04] were 1.15 times more likely to have good practices regarding food safety as compared to their counterparts at a lower age group at a 95% confidence interval. There were generally low knowledge levels (29.4%), attitudes (41.2%) and practices (32.4%) of study respondents regarding food safety. This was attributed to their low education levels and age. There should be regular health education and sensitizations of butchers by relevant authorities on food safety so as to increase on their level of awareness. Relevant authorities at the district should Formulate and implement a policy that guides butchers to ensure strict adherence to food safety rules. | en_US |
