Safety and Quality of Fresh Fruit Juices Sold by Street Vendors in Nyeri County

Abstract

Street vending of foods is on the rise because consumers are increasingly looking for cheap and convenient alternatives to mainstream foods. As such, fruit juices have become one of the major street foods vended as they have proportional amounts of vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals essential for human health. Even if this may be the case, the safety of the juices sold on the street cannot be guaranteed since this area is still uncontrolled and many of the sellers give little to no thought to the security and quality of the products they sell. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate the street vendors' knowledge of food safety and hygiene standards, as well as the microbiological and chemical safety and the quality of the juices they offered to consumers. The study was carried out in Nyeri County using a cross-sectional design with both descriptive and analytical components. Exhaustive sampling was done for both the street vendors of fresh fruit juice and the fruit juice samples. Data was collected through face-to-face interviews as well as by observations of general hygiene and cleanliness. Twenty samples of fruit juice were collected for laboratory analyses using simple random sampling. Survey data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software version 20. Descriptive statistics such as means and frequencies were used to present the findings. Correlation and regression analysis were also used to determine the relationship between various parameters. Analyses of variance were performed using the Genstat statistical software version 15 to determine the differences amongst the microbial organisms isolated and vitamin C levels analyzed on different juices collected from various sites. Differences were significant at p ≤ 0.05 and were compared using the Fisher’s protected LSD test. According to the findings, most of the vendors (75%) were women and mostly belonged to the 31–40 age group. More than half (55%) of them had attained secondary education, which was a normal level of education dispersed throughout the factors. Only 7.5% of the respondents xi were widowed, compared to 70% of the respondents who were married. Most respondents (95%) had not had a food handlers' medical check-up during the previous six months, and the majority of respondents (87.5%) had not received any training on food safety and hygiene procedures. All respondents concurred that they cleansed their hands with soap and water before handling fruits and fruit juices. Half (52%) of the respondents also agreed that having the fruit juices unrefrigerated for the whole day was unsafe, however, 45% of the respondents thought it would be safe at the end of the day. The participants in the survey handled garbage by emptying and cleaning their trash cans at the end of each workday. Every respondent agreed that vendors should only purchase fruits from reliable sources and that the water used to wash fruits should be clean because the water used to make fruit juice can be a contaminating factor. Majority of the respondents (87.5%) ensured their environment is free from sources of contamination, such as flies, stagnant water, and while 72.5% agreed that surfaces from which the fruit juices were made were free of personal effects such as bags and phones. All of the respondents also made sure that the processing area had enough lighting so that any physical dangers that might get into the fruit juices can be seen. The vendors' understanding of hygienic procedures was above average; a bigger proportion (73.6%) had strong hygiene knowledge, 23.8% had acceptable knowledge, and only 2.6% had poor food hygiene knowledge. An analysis of correlations revealed that training in food safety and hygiene measures was substantially connected with medical examination (r- 0.675, p < .01). More than half (60%) of the fruit juice samples tested contained Staphylococcus aureus from mango, passion, pineapple and tree tomato, E. coli was detected in 20% of the fruit juice samples from mango, pineapple, pawpaw and watermelon from Karatina and Salmonella was only detected in 5% of the samples from pineapple fruit juice collected from Gatitu trading center. According to the KEBS standards for fruit juices and nectars, KS EAS 948:2019, E. coli should not be detected in fruits juices meant for direct human consumption. Although not explicitly highlighted in the KEBS xii standard for fruit juices, detection of Salmonella and/or S. aureus in food is potentially hazardous and a cause for alarm. No pesticide residue levels were detected in all the samples. According to the study's findings, the majority of fruit juice street vendors are more knowledgeable about food safety. The study also indicates that the respondents can perform the necessary food safety practice but due to their negligence this causes microbiological contamination of fruit juices which is a public health concern. Therefore, County Public Health officials should pay close attention with a focus on improvement of practices, regulatory compliances and vendor training that are essential to ensure food safety of fruit juice vended in the streets.