A recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit of our schools’ ability to receive and enact food recalls demonstrated that the current system is highly flawed in its reaction time to potential dangerous recalls putting more that 30 million school aged children at risk of contracting debilitating and sometimes deadly foodborne illnesses. The lack of communication between regulatory and investigative agencies such as the FDA and schools created a situation where schools continued to serve contaminated product in their cafeterias for up to a week after the important recall notices we made available to the public.
The audit focused heavily on the Peanut Corporation of America’s 2008 national recall of Salmonella contaminated peanuts and peanut butter related to one of its processing facilities in Georgia. The audit pointed out how a miscommunication surrounding the manufacture dates for PCA related products led to 246 students contracting salmonellosis, an infection of Salmonella bacteria, and as many as 46 were hospitalized from their salmonellosis complications.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro who chairs the House Appropriations subcommittee on agriculture stated, “It is absolutely essential that food recalls affecting schools are carried out quickly and effectively because children are most vulnerable to becoming seriously ill from food-borne illness outbreaks.”
In response to the audit, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack issued a written response ensuring that the safety of school meals is of “utmost importance” for the agriculture department and the government is developing a formal system to get advance notice when the FDA is investigating food-safety concerns that could lead to recalls. He also promised new policies and guidelines to improve communication with states and schools.
So far, the Obama admistration has made a lot of promises regarding food safety in the United States, from new guidelines regarding high risk foods to the promise of improved reaction time and better interagency communication, the goals have been set high. The unfortunate part is that high goals are not enough. There are supposedly a stringent set of rules already in place for the food suppliers responsible for the school lunch programs. But still, we are dealing with situations that shouldn’t be an issue of figuring out how to keep these food poisoning incidents from occurring again as much as focusing on preventing school lunch outbreaks from ever occurring in the first place.
Foodborne illness is very adept at attacking children and children are especially susceptible to the severe complications of food poisoning such as hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), a potentially fatal blood disease that is often related to an infection of E. coli. Hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) is the leading cause of acute kidney failure for children in the U.S. There is so much to worry about when you child goes off to school; your child’s lunch shouldn’t be one of them.
