A Comparative Study of Food Safety Climate Perceptions among Hotel Cooking Staff

The purpose of this study is to investigate the difference in food safety climate perceptions among hotel cooking staff according to whether the HACCP system is applied and the degree of hygiene education, and to confirm the necessity of the HACCP system and periodic hygiene education. For the study, 504 members of the cooking staff in 12 hotels of 5 star level that apply or do not apply the HACCP system were surveyed. Data analysis was performed using SPSS (ver. 22.0) for frequency and cross tabulation analysis; reliability and feasibility analysis; and t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Comparison of differences in food safety climate by general variables showed that a longer career lead to higher risk awareness (P less than 0.05) and sense of commitment (P less than 0.05). Higher income also leads to higher risk awareness (P less than 0.01) and resources (P less than 0.05). Also, in terms of level of education, participants with a 4-year university degree or higher have a higher awareness of leadership (P less than 0.01) and commitment (P less than 0.01) to the food safety climate. As for differences in food safety climate perceptions according to hotel variables, 5 star gold-hotels show significantly higher awareness (P less than 0.001) than 5 star silver-hotels. Differences in food safety climate perception according to HACCP application reveal that hotels that apply the HACCP system have higher awareness of all five sub-factors compared to hotels that do not apply the HACCP system. Differences in food safety climate by the frequency of hygiene education show that staff who receive education more than three to five times a year have a higher awareness of the food safety climate. Based on the results of this study, in order to raise the perception of the food safety climate in the hotel kitchen, frequent periodic hygiene education should be conducted and the HACCP hygienic system should be applied