| With a national average turnover rate of 115%, the foodservice industry is currently spending between $9 and $24 billion annually to hire and re-train foodservice personnel. The public, government, special interest groups and food industry have traditionally maintained that training foodservice personnel is crucial to food safety. This study explores this paradigm both quantitative and qualitative methodologies in an attempt to assess the true impact of training foodservice personnel relative to food safety.;Surveys were designed and given to foodservice personnel to assess employee job satisfaction, examinations to test pre and post training knowledge; and random sampling of beef products, prior to and after training, for bacteriological analysis including total count and a modified hydrophobic grid membrane filtration method for the detection of the sanitation index organism Escherichia coli.;Application of the Kruskal-Wallis One-Way Anova revealed that the difference in population means between pre and post training beef samples, were insignificant suggesting that process rather than training is the key to food safety.;Based on findings in this study, it is recommended that foodservice establishments adopt and implement a system that the author refers to as food safety through total quality. This system is based on a two-pronged strategy including Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point implementation and process mapping to increase food protection, operational efficiency of foodservice establishments and salaries of foodservice personnel with the ultimate aim of satisfying the customer.;Because this study involved small sample sizes, future studies concerning training and its impact on food safety should expand the sample sizes. Additionally, there should be a variety of locations utilized and more comprehensive job satisfaction surveys conducted. |
