Food Safety, Personal Hygiene, Haccp

In any food establishments, food handlers are either the first line of defense or the cause for the need for defense. This is because most types of foods can be contaminated and it is the responsibility of the food handler to ensure the safety of the consumers by eliminating or minimizing the contamination to safer levels for consumption. How to lessen, prevent, and eliminate contamination that causes foodborne illness will be the focus of the study.

Various researchers have studied food safety, personal hygiene, and hazard analysis critical control point or HACCP. Usually, they deal with food establishments in general like Jolibee, McDonalds, Bistro, and many others. However, what has not been done by any of those researchers, was to study the food handlers before they go into the industry, specifically, the study of the I-CATHY students of St. Scholastica's College who aspires to become future professional food handlers in prestigious establishments someday.

Once an I-CATHY student looks for an establishment to do practicum or when a student looks for a job after they graduate, some of them experience being a kitchen staff or a food handler. In establishments like fine dining restaurants or hotels, there is no room for mistakes or negligence, and being a food handler in it is a rather crucial job. It is a delicate post that promotes discipline both in the workplace and in the home, for the people involved in the kitchen because of the danger of having a foodborne illness outbreak. Once an outbreak has been reported, the main loss of an establishment is not the money, but the reputation that took so long to build.

In line with this, the importance of this study is to provide a stepping-stone or ground in which the discipline required by the industry will be practiced and honed in school, where the future food handlers begin to learn.

If the I-CATHY can ultimately make the concepts of food safety, personal hygiene, and HACCP system as a way of living (in and outside school grounds), then the industry can be assured that our distant graduates are well-honed, knowledgeable, and competitive with their capabilities, and may bring honor to St. Scholastica's Institute of Catering and Technology.