Award Date

Spring 2010

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Hotel Administration

Department

Hotel Administration

Advisor 1

Yen-Soon Kim, Committee Co-chair

First Committee Member

Billy Bai, Committee Co-chair

Second Committee Member

Carola Raab, Committee Member

Graduate Faculty Representative

Seung mook Choi

Number of Pages

91

Abstract

An estimated 76 million food-borne illnesses occur in the United States each year, causing 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Food safety is an increasingly important topic to governmental food regulators, not only in trying to reduce the number of illnesses from contaminated food. Governmental regulators also are becoming aware of the vulnerability of the food supply chain as a target for bioterrorism. Recommendations have been developed to protect the U. S. food supply from terrorism, but little of the research and recommendations relate to the food-service level.

Eighty percent of reported cases of food-borne disease occur in food-service establishments. The results of health inspections over six months in the Las Vegas, NV, area were analyzed to determine whether violations were due to human or non-human factors. Human factors were defined as cross-contamination, time and temperature abuse, and poor personal hygiene. The non-human factors were environmental violations, such as poor maintenance and lack of facilities. The human factors can be improved by developing proper training systems and monitoring food safety practices by supervisors.

The data show that human factors were responsible for 62.8% of violations cited by health inspectors. Upon reinspection, 97.4% of food-service establishments that had received a grade of less than A had corrected the violations and received an A grade. This shows that effective education can dramatically improve violations due to human factors. This establishes a significant foundation to establish proper food safety training systems to prevent food-borne illnesses in the food-service industry.

Keywords

Food safety; Food-borne illness; Health code; Health inspection; Restaurants; Sanitation

Disciplines

Food Science | Public Health

File Format

pdf

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Download


Share

COinS