A recent article by USA Today reported that school aged children may be at a significant risk of food poisoning from the foods served in school cafeterias. The newspaper looked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) statistics between 1998 and 2007 regarding reported foodborne illness outbreaks related to school cafeteria foods. According to the paper, 470 school related food poisoning outbreaks were reported with over 23, 000 children falling victim to foodborne illness.
In over half of the cases, investigators were unable to identify the specific pathogen responsible for the out breaks. This isn’t surprising since some food pathogens, such as the norovirus, can be very difficult to isolate in conventional tests.
In some of the outbreaks, no food source was identified as the particular culprit. It is difficult to identify a particular food source when samples of the foods may not test positive but still may have caused the outbreak. It is also possible that workers were the source of contamination and the food was nothing more than a means of transmission. This can occur with foodborne pathogens like hepatitis A, shigella, and norovirus.
Some of the confirmed contaminated food sources included, cold pasta, turkey, milk and tortillas. Outside of the study’s time frame is the Salmonella outbreak related to contaminated peanut butter that was responsible for sickening hundreds of school children.
Just a week ago, the Government Accountability Office was asked to look into the potential dangers posed by E. coli to student lunches. E. coli poisoning can turn particularly dangerous for children because they are more susceptible to hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), a terrible blood disease that has a penchant for killing the kidneys of its victims.
Next year congress plans to reexamine the Child Nutrition Act in efforts to boost school lunch safety.
