MANHATTAN, Kan., Aug. 4 (UPI) -- Lack of resources and lack of will stand in the way of U.S. restaurant employees' applying food-safety practices, researchers said.
Researchers at Kansas State University conducted focus groups involving 125 restaurant employees and asked why restaurant employees may not follow food-safety procedures to prevent food-borne illness.
The responses were similar for workers with no formal food-safety training as well as those who had participated in a formal ServSafe training program. Between the two groups of employees, 90 barriers to implementing food-safety practices were identified.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, said inadequate training and resources, time constraints and inconvenience were most often identified as reasons why three important food-safety practices may not take place: hand washing, using thermometers and cleaning work surfaces.
In the group that had received formal training, additional barriers included no incentive to implement the practices, managers not monitoring if employees cleaned work surfaces, inconvenient location of sinks, dry skin from hand washing, lack of working thermometers and managers not monitoring the use of thermometers.
