Mass nutrition systems and food-borne infectious diseases

This thesis aims to examine the in-service training status of personnel working in mass feeding systems, the factors that may cause infectious diseases during production stages, and the knowledge and implementation of hygiene practices by personnel and in the workplace The study is a cross-sectional research conducted between February and July 2024 with 160 participants in the kitchens of a catering company operating in three different provinces. The aim was to measure the knowledge of foodborne infectious diseases and to identify practices. A questionnaire and a field control form were used as data collection tools. The collected data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics Version 25.0 software. Within the scope of the study, frequency and percentage distributions, as well as mean and standard deviation values, were provided. The chi-square test was applied for comparisons between data, and Pearson correlation analysis was used to determine the relationships between variables. The data were considered significant at p<0.05. According to the study, Hepatitis A (57.5%), Hepatitis E (50.0%), and Cholera (48.1%) were the most commonly known diseases, while Clostridium botulinum (10.0%) and Staphylococcus aureus (8.1%) were the least known. The average frequency of hygiene training among employees was 4.12, and the average frequency of receiving infectious disease training was 1.92. A statistically significant difference was found between education level and receiving infectious disease training (p<0.001), while no significant difference was found with hygiene training (p=0.055). Among the regions, the highest rate of receiving hygiene training was in Şanlıurfa (92.5%), and the highest rate of receiving infectious disease training was in Diyarbakır (76.1%). The study concluded that the content of training programs in catering organizations should include foodborne infectious diseases as a topic, the frequency of monthly in-service training sessions should be increased, and employees' behaviors and attitudes toward infectious diseases should be supported.