Ungku Fatimah Ungku Zainal Abidin

Universiti Putra Malaysia | UPM · Department of Food Service and Management

Limited studies have explored employees' perceptions of food safety culture in onsite foodservices, despite the growing recognition of the impact of improving food safety practices. A cross-sectional paper-based survey was conducted with nonsupervisory employees (n = 582) from health care and school foodservice operations (n = 51) in three Midwest...

Food safety is important to today's food industry operators as consumers have become increasingly concerned about risks related to food. Unlike foodservice operators or health inspectors, consumers can only rely on the visible cues, particularly those associated with food hygiene to judge the level of food safety in eating establishments. While pre...

The role of organizational influencers on foodservice employees’ motivation to follow safe handling practices was explored. Data were collected from 311 employees with no supervisory responsibilities working in commercial and non-commercial foodservices. Employees identified level of agreement with eight organizational influencers that motivate the...

This study identified the barriers and motivational factors that influence nonsupervisory foodservice employees' decisions to perform safe food handling behaviors. Responses to a bilingual questionnaire were received from 1,103 employees working in four types of retail foodservice. Respondents rated 8 of 16 listed barriers as important obstacles in...

Consumers are reported to be increasingly concerned about their health. Nonetheless, consumers show different attitudes toward food at home and away from home. In particular, consumers tend to shy away from healthy food items when dining on special occasions. This study is the first to look into the number of healthy menu items provided to consumer...

Foodborne pathogens, such as Staphylococcus aureus and Salmonella spp., develop antimicrobial resistance (AMR) over time, resulting in compromised food safety. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the prevalence, compliance against Malaysia’s veterinary standing procedure directive (APTVM 16 (c): 1/2011): Appendix 7¹³⁾, and antimicrobial resist...

Poor hygiene in the food service industry is a critical public health concern in the Maldives, and is caused by several issues, such as limited inspections and monitoring, inadequate training and knowledge, and a lack of a regulatory framework. Thus, this study aims to identify the levels of knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) of food handlers...

Poor hygiene in the food services industry is a critical public health concern in the Maldives, with an average of 35 public complaints per month regarding the poor hygienic conditions of the restaurants in Male’, the capital of Maldives. Thus, this study aimed to identify the level of knowledge, attitude, and the gap of self-reported with the obse...

The Salmonella outbreak is one of the leading foodborne diseases in the world with increasing cases being reported annually. However, the current methods for Salmonella detection in foods are outdated, laborious and time-consuming. This necessitated developing a technique that is rapid for Salmonella detection in foods. Thus, the current study aime...

Plant-based cheese analogue (PBCA) has just started to debut in the plant-based dairy product market in Malaysia. Despite that, no research has been made on the consumers’ view on PBCA in Malaysia. This study attempts to identify the Malaysian consumers’ purchase intention of PBCA, assess the consumers’ associations evoked by cheese, and discover a...

Increased meat consumption is said to have detrimental effects on health, environmental, and non-ethical. One alternative to meat consumption is meat analogues. To our knowledge, Malaysian consumers' perceptions, expectations and their purchase intention of meat analogues is less explored. In our study, significant determinants of consumers’ purcha...

Halal and Kosher generally may have shared certain attributes as both were originated within Abrahamic religions. The globalization and internalization of food industry has encouraged both dietary laws to pursue standards regulatory and procedures not only to preserve their laws and beliefs but also to provide better services to their respective ma...

Food poisoning cases in Malaysia showed an increasing trend every year where 496 episodes were reported in 2018 as compared to 401 episodes in the same week of the year 2017. Bacillus cereus is one of the foodborne pathogens related to food poisoning cases in Malaysia. The main cause for the outbreak of B. cereus is the unregulated temperature duri...

Polystyrene is commonly used on a daily basis for the packaging of takeaways as if people assume that it is safe. Although studies show the migration of styrene into food could cause adverse health impacts such as cancer, neurotoxicity, and hormone-related problems, less is known about public awareness of its risk. This chapter presents a study con...

Being knowledgeable about food safety is one of the strategies to address food-borne diseases (FBD). The systematic review was focuses on food safety knowledge and the respective interventions. Generally, numerous relevant studies have been done to determine the level of food safety knowledge among food handlers, but studies from a Malaysian perspe...

Abstract Purpose This study aims to explore the challenges of getting halal certification for restaurants in north-eastern Thailand. Design/methodology/approach Qualitative research approach was adopted to analyse the collected data. The research procedures and the interview questions were examined by the Ethics Committee for Research involving hum...

This paper aims to assess consumer awareness about fraudulent honey and its impact on purchase intention using an extended Theory of Planned Behaviour model. An online questionnaire survey was administered among honey consumers in Malaysia. Multiple regression analysis was employed on the 289-obtained-data to generate the relationship between aware...

The diversity of foodservice establishments in the market not only extending the menu options but also offering a wider range of dining experiences. In particular, dining at a themed restaurant is viewed as an authentic, fun and pleasurable experience. However, a small glitch from the management may turn down the whole dining experience. Thus, the...

The consumers who did not comply with safe food-handling practices also contributed to the occurrence of food contamination. This study adapted the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to examine the moderating effect of gender and level of education differences that influence the intention of safe food handling at home. A total of 623 consumers based...

Numerous efforts have been taken to prepare graduates for employment right after their graduations. The statistics show that over 53,000 of Malaysian graduates were unemployed in 2017 and expected to increase in 2018 as the total unemployment for all group of people in July 2018 was 518,600. Although the outcome-based education (OBE) has been advoc...

This research investigated consumers’ self-reported food safety practices, along with their determinants. The cross-sectional survey employed a questionnaire comprised of 16 items to gather data pertaining to food safety practices among consumers in Sibu located at Sarawak. Of the 800 disseminated questionnaires, a total of 623 were completed and r...

This study employed the extended theory of planned behavior (TPB) to predict the intention of adult consumers towards safe food handling at home. A self-administered survey was distributed to a total of 623 respondents who lived in the Sibu district, Malaysia and analyzed the data using the partial least squares structural equation modeling techniq...

The purpose of this study was to assess the consumers’ food safety knowledge and its determinants. The analysis was based on data collected through a cross-sectional survey in East Malaysia, which described the knowledge about personal hygiene, foodborne disease symptoms, high-risk foods, cross-contamination, and temperature control held by Sibu-ba...

The food truck industry in Malaysia shows continuous growth since it was first introduced a few years ago. However, the increasing number of food truck businesses in Klang Valley flags a question on how the owners strategize their businesses to stand up from the competitors. The limitation surrounds this business environment forces food truck owner...

Awareness of the complexity in the global food chain, combined with several major halal food issues and scandals, are an impetus for major changes in the halal food control system in Malaysia. Malaysia holds a special position in the global halal market as the first country that assigns a government agency to regulate its halal matters and certific...

The provision of halal certified food is important for both Muslims consumers as well as halal food manufacturers in Malaysia. Nevertheless, there are still lots of consumers’ complaints resulted from the partial implementation of Malaysia halal standard (MS1500:2009) by these food manufacturers. Hence, critical factors affecting the implementation...