SUN EDITORIAL:

A serving of food safety

Congress should make sure children are protected from food-borne illnesses

Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009 | 2:05 a.m.

The chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee wants an investigation into the safety of school lunches. Judging by what the nation has seen with E. coli outbreaks and other food scares, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., has good reason to be concerned that potentially fatal contaminants could be served up in school cafeterias.

A recent report to Congress found that the Agriculture Department’s Food and Nutrition Service, which provides up to 20 percent of the food served in the nation’s schools, doesn’t always provide the schools with timely recall notices. That increases the risk of contaminated food making its way onto children’s plates.

Miller notes that schools receive food from other sources and points to the recent E. coli outbreak from a meat packing plant in New York. None of the 500,000 pounds went to schools, but the contaminated meat — which caused two deaths and sickened 16 others — highlights another problem. The federal schools program mandates that all its beef be tested for E. coli. However, the meat that schools receive from other sources is not required to undergo E. coli testing.

In response, Miller asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate the entire school food system, which is complex. Federal, state and local governments all play roles, with food coming from a variety of sources.

There is already a move in Congress to tighten requirements and oversight. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., has proposed a bill mandating that schools quickly get recall notices. She also is planning legislation that would require more testing for contaminants at meat packing plants.

Miller is correct to call for a full investigation, and he should press the issue. Children, whose immune systems are still developing, are particularly vulnerable to E. coli and other contaminants. The entire school food system needs to be fully explored so Congress can find ways to make sure schools are well protected from food-borne illnesses.

Discussion: 1 comment so far…

By fosimmons

11/10/09 at 8:57 a.m.

Suggest removal

Fellow Idiots: No Child Left Behind and Ketchup is a vegatable - guess whose programs these were? We all know that answer. Look at our kids today due to Reagan and CriminalBush. Where is the health department to check the kitchens in the schools? Fatness comes with eating bottles of ketchup on your eggs and fries and school fake meatloaf patties and then waiting for your school bus only to find out you have been left behind due to no money coming in after the $1.4 TRILLION CriminalBush tax cut for the rich and that illegal Iraq War, a sleeping SEC and an FAA that treats the airline industry as customers not companies to be regulated. His disasterous legacy lives on and will for a long, long time out into our remaining futures. I like Pres. Obama, but he's not closing Guantanamo yet and has not pulled out troops out of Iraq or Afghanistan fast enough, nor stopped renditions, and this is unacceptable. This is off the subject, but perhaps now the government will restore agencies back to doing what they were supposed to be doing all along, but were not for the past eight years. We the people certainly deserve more than this, by far. Scott McClellan, Pres. Ford (dead now) and Kitty Kelly have it right in their honest and truthful books on CriminalBush but our memories are pretty darn short lived when reality starts to set in .... CriminalBush and his AWOL, DUI'S, drugs and a C average at Yale, not to mention his business losses in the zillions (not his money either) .... at MIT he'd been kicked out the first month with a C in anything - and all that prior to his being idiotically GIVEN the presidency. Thank you.