Study design
We will conduct a scoping review of peer-reviewed and grey literature on the available evidence of food charitable organisations’ compliance with food safety and general hygiene requirements in Africa and the rest of the world. This review will be guided by Arksey and O’Malley’s scoping review framework [15], which stipulates the following steps:
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1.
Identify the research question
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2.
Identifying relevant studies
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3.
Study selection
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4.
Charting the data
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5.
Collating, summarising and reporting the results
In addition, a quality assessment as recommended by Levac et al. [16] will be conducted in this study.
Identifying the research question
The research question is: What is the evidence available on the charitable food assistance system’s compliance with food safety and general hygiene requirements in Africa and the rest of the world?
The sub-research questions are as follows:
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What is the state of food safety and general hygiene compliance in charitable food assistance system globally?
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What is the level of food safety and general hygiene in African charitable food assistance system compared to other formal and informal food establishments in Africa?
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What is the food control system applicable to the charitable food assistance system in Africa and the rest of the world?
Eligibility criteria
The study will use the Population Concept Context (PCC) model [17] to determine the eligibility of the research question as illustrated in Additional file 1: Table S1.
Identifying relevant studies
The review will include studies utilising qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods published in peer-reviewed journals as well as in grey literature addressing the research question. An electronic search of the following databases will be conducted: African Index Medicus, PubMed, Google Scholar, EBSCOhost (MEDLINE with full text, Academic Search Complete, MEDLINE) and open access for unpublished theses and dissertations. Articles will also be searched through the ‘Cited by’ search as well as citations included in the reference lists of included articles. Websites such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and governmental websites will be searched for policies and guidelines for food collection and redistribution. Studies will be identified by searching literature published in any language between 1967 and 2018. This is because the world’s first food recovery and redistribution practice in a form of a Food Bank was set up in 1967 in Phoenix, Arizona, in the USA by John van Hengel, and since then, thousands of food recovery and redistribution organisations have been set up all over the world [18, 19]. The search keywords will include food charitable organisations, food redistribution/recovery practices, food control management, food safety and hygiene compliance and charitable food assistance system. Search strategy will be piloted to check the appropriateness of the selected electronic databases and keywords (Additional file 2: Table S2).
Study selection
The eligibility criteria will be developed to ensure specific information relating to the research question is included in the studies.
Inclusion criteria
The review will include studies that present evidence of the following:
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Charitable food assistance system between 1967 and 2018;
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Charitable food assistance practices globally;
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Charitable food assistance practices rendering services for free (free food, volunteering etc.)
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Food safety and/or general hygiene requirements;
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Food hygiene and safety management
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Food control system
Exclusion criteria
The review will exclude studies that present evidence of the following:
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Non-food charity practice;
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Charitable food assistance practice before 1967;
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Charitable food assistance practice rendering services for gain (monetary etc.)
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General hygiene and safety not associated with food;
The primary reviewer, the principal investigator (PI), will conduct a comprehensive search and screening of the study titles from the above-mentioned databases. All citations after the searches will be exported to the EndNote library, and all duplicates will be removed before embarking on abstract and full article screening. Two reviewers will conduct abstract followed by full article screening of the selected studies independently with guidance from the eligibility criteria.
To enhance the article search procedure, the primary reviewer will consult a subject librarian at the UKZN library services to seek help with retrieving and finding articles to be included in the full-article screening. The subject librarian for Public Health in the University of KwaZulu-Natal will also be approached for help with full article studies that are not on open access.
The screening results will be reported by the use of the adapted PRISMA chart (Additional file 3: Figure S1).
Charting of data
A data charting tool will be developed using google forms to extract relevant information from each screened and selected study. It will be piloted. Data charting table (Additional file 4: Table S3) will be used to extract background information and process the information from each utilised study. The variables and themes included will be continually updated to effectively answer the research question.
Collating, summarising and reporting the results
A narrative account of the data extracted from the included studies will be analysed using the thematic content analysis. Data will be extracted around the following themes: motives for charitable food assistance practice, benefits, challenges and barriers of charitable food assistance system, food safety and general hygiene requirements, vulnerability of donated ‘surplus food’, food hygiene and safety management, vulnerability of beneficiaries of donated ‘surplus food’ and applicable food control system. Emerging themes will also be extracted. The resulting themes will be analysed and their relationship (significance and relevance) to the research question critically examined. Reviewers will also analyse the implication of the findings in relation to the aim of the study as well as to future research and evidential framework for policy and practice in low- and medium-income settings. Recommended general food safety and general hygiene requirements and guidelines that are applicable to the charitable food assistance system will be drawn from the study evidence.
Quality appraisal
The quality of the included primary studies will be appraised using the Mixed Method Appraisal Tool (MMAT)—version 2011 [20, 21]. For appraising a qualitative study, we will use section 1 of the MMAT; for a quantitative study, we will use section 2 for randomised controlled, section 3 for non-randomised, and section 4 for descriptive studies. For a mixed methods study, we will use section 1 for appraising the qualitative component, the appropriate section for the quantitative component (2, 3 or 4) and section 5 for the mixed methods component. The tool will be used to examine the appropriateness of study aims, the context relevance, theoretical inferences to answer research questions, author’s discussions and conclusions. The overall quality for each of the studies selected will be calculated following the MMAT guidelines (score = number of criteria met/4) and then presented using the following descriptors:
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Low quality (1–25%), where minimal criteria are met
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Average (26–50%)
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Above average (51–75%)
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High quality (876–100%), where all criteria are met.
For mixed methods studies, the principle is that the overall quality of a combination cannot be more than the quality of its weakest component [20, 21]. Consequently, the overall quality score will be the lowest score of the study components (qualitative or quantitative).