Photo courtesy Stockvault
A school cafeteria worker in North Dakota returns to work after a weekend illness—and, within days, 52 students and eight faculty members are sick.
Ninety-one people fall ill from eating contaminated food at a high school in Illinois, while 136 succumb to illness after eating at a school cafeteria in Kansas.
All told, reports USA Today, “23,000 food-borne illnesses were reported in schools from 1998 through 2007.” And that’s just the illnesses the newspaper could identify from U.S. Centers from Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data.
Given that schools serve more than 5 billion meals annually, it should come as no surprise that lots of kids and adults end up sick, falling victim to mild stomach upset, diarrhea, stomach flu, or a more serious ailment leading to hospitalization. And it’s not as if kids are dropping dead from cafeteria food.
Still, this kind of news should prompt local school leaders to ask questions. Are school cafeterias as clean as they should be? Do cafeteria workers wear gloves when handling food? Are they checking the temperature in the refrigerator? Are ill workers handling food?
I’m sure school cafeteria managers and servers across the nation are very conscious about hygiene. But, then again, people can get so wrapped up in the daily grind of a job that they overlook things.
How else to explain USA Today‘s finding that “more than 8,500 schools failed to have their kitchens inspected at all last year, and another 18,000 fell short of a requirement in the Child Nutrition Act that calls for cafeteria inspections at least twice a year.”
Yes, local school leaders already have their hands full. And you really don’t need yet another media “horror story” to distract you.
Still, it’s worth a look at the series of articles USA Today recently published on school food safety. It’s informative. And some of the findings are just downright painful.
For example, I was agog at an accompanying report stating that the school lunch program has provided beef and chicken “that wouldn’t meet the quality or safety standards of many fast-food restaurants.” Apparently, fast-food restaurants “test the ground beef they buy five to 10 times more often than the [U.S. Department of Agriculture] tests beef made for schools.”
Ouch. Maybe kids aren’t so foolish to prefer McDonald’s over school cafeteria food.
Del Stover, Senior Editor
