article · Environmental Health Insights
Meat handling across African slaughterhouses presents major public health and occupational concerns. A comprehensive review of literature published between 1961 and 2022 highlights that meat handlers face persistent socio-economic challenges, such as poor financial returns, unpredictable working conditions, unstable markets, insecurity, and limited access to healthcare services. Furthermore, widespread informal operations in unregistered facilities mean many workers lack professional training on proper handling practices. Consequently, improper processing contributes to the contamination of slaughter environments and contact surfaces with foodborne pathogens, including Salmonella species and Escherichia coli. To mitigate these public health risks, the review emphasises coordinated actions across governments, institutions, and communities. Interventions require public authorities to enforce regulations governing meat processing, alongside targeted education programmes to train handlers in safe meat preparation, handling, and storage techniques.
Unsafe meat handling in slaughterhouses threatens the health of workers and consumers alike. When processing occurs in informal, unregulated settings without adequate hygiene training, common pathogens like Salmonella and E. coli can easily enter the food chain. Understanding these occupational and systemic hurdles is essential for designing targeted training, improving worker welfare, and protecting the wider public from preventable foodborne illnesses.
The findings point to a need for accessible hygiene training programmes, compliance monitoring tools, and sanitation solutions tailored for slaughterhouses and informal meat processing facilities. Potential users include municipal health authorities, abattoir operators, and educational providers. However, because this work is a literature review outlining policy and training recommendations, it does not detail a specific technology or product, leaving practical commercial applications at an early conceptual stage.
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Meat handling is a crucial aspect of public health as it forms complex interactions among humans, animals, and the environment. African meat handlers continue to face various challenges in slaughterhouses that significantly impact their lives and the general public during meat processing. This paper reviews the challenges meat handlers encounter and the associated risks of improper meat handling in various African slaughterhouses. A comprehensive literature search was performed on Science Direct, Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus and Google Scholar. Articles published to investigate the challenges and health risks of meat handling practices in Africa from 1961 to 2022 were included in this review. African meat handlers face socio-economic difficulties, including inadequate returns, unpredictable working environment, market, security, and limited healthcare access. Many meat handlers work informally in unregistered facilities and are not trained by experts on proper meat handling. This results in improper meat handling, raising the possibility of meat contamination by foodborne pathogens like Salmonella sp. and E. coli on slaughter and contact surfaces, hence posing a threat to meat safety and public health. We recommended that governmental, institutional and community-level actions should be used to address the health challenges associated with improper meat handling in Africa. Government and institutional bodies play an important role in supporting and upholding the laws that guide proper meat handling and processing. Meat handlers must be educated on meat safety, handling and storage to ensure meat is safe for consumption.
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DOI: 10.1177/11786302241301991
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