Purpose: This study was carried out to provide insight into handwashing and temperature violations throughout the deli, meat, bakery, seafood, produce, and general departments and to test for trends in noncompliance. Differences in compliance based on geographic location, time of day, or year may reveal gaps and factors in food safety that were previously unknown. This knowledge could influence changes to training and infrastructure to improve compliance to food safety standards.
Methods: The data set comprised of 72,278 unique store audits and 9.5 million data points. Questions from 17 unique audit forms, targeting the same category of violation, were analyzed as a unit. Data was geocoded and fit into pairwise associations between violations and geographic, temporal, and departmental differences. A logistic regression model was fit to determine any differences between the 336 auditors.
Results: Handwashing violations were highest in deli departments (0.0745) and throughout the East North Central Division of the United States. Temporal differences had small effects in handwashing compliance, but proportions of temperature violations were highest in the morning (0.204), on Tuesdays (0.171), and during the months of August to October (0.180, 0.179, 0.173). Temperature violations were highest in produce (0.371) and meat (0.129) departments.
Significance: Data on the temporal, geographic, and departmental trends allowed greater insight into whether violations were related and predicted by internal and external factors. Results will be used to identify priority areas for targeted intervention strategies and continued research to identify other factors in noncompliance.