Hygiene Knowledge and Practices in the Lagos Wild Meat Value Chain: Cultural Influences, Regulatory Gaps, and Infrastructure Needs.

Wild meat, commonly known as bushmeat is a cultural, economic, and nutritional staple food in many regions of the world, including sub-Saharan Africa. Wild meat value chains face major hygiene and sanitary regulation challenges, but only a few studies have investigated these challenges, focusing instead on market dynamics and biodiversity issues. This study examines the hygiene practices, attitudes, perceptions, and knowledge of public health risks among actors in the Lagos (Nigeria) wild meat value chain, and its consequences for food safety. We employed a mixed qualitative and quantitative study design, using in-depth interviews of key informants (n=34) purposively selected from the wild meat value chains hunter, wholesaler, processor, and retailer nodes. An inductive thematic approach and descriptive statistics were used for data analysis. Results revealed three overarching themes: wild meat process hygiene, personal hygiene, and governance. Social norms, distrust, infrastructural deficits, and poor regulation were the drivers of the hygiene practices in the value chain. Actors showed poor knowledge of the health risks associated with wild meat, prioritizing taste over its safety. Women were more at risk of contracting zoonotic infections due to gender biases which exposed them to riskier nodes of the value chain. Wild meat as a food system in developing urban cities presents a potential source of food-borne disease transmission and zoonotic pathogen spillover to actors and the general public, due to underlying poor hygiene practices. We recommend intervention approaches that integrate peoples cultures, provision of infrastructure, enforcement of sanitary standards, actors education, and further empirical research to stimulate the establishment of hygiene guidelines for the regulation of urban wild meat value chains.