Last time I posted about school cafeterias, my stomach turned. The federal government knowingly shipped ground beef to schools that may have been tainted with salmonella; other meat from the same shipping facility was recalled and destroyed yet the nation’s school children were still fed meat 
from the same processing center. Today, my stomach is turning again: USA Today is reporting that more than 26,000 school cafeterias failed to get required health inspections in the 2007-2008 school year.
What is interesting is that this was “good” news; the 26,500 schools that failed to get two health inspections represent 28% of the schools that participate in the USDA school lunch program. So 28% of the schools skipping the inspections is good news? Well, it is if you consider that 32% of schools failed to get these inspections in the 2006-2007 school year. Nearly one-third of schools participating in the USDA school lunch program didn’t get the inspections mandated by the Child Nutrition Act in 2006-2007. That…is…crazy!
“Federal data show that more than half the schools in eight states — including California and New York— failed to meet the requirement for two inspections during the 2007-08 school year. In Maine, the state where the fewest schools conformed to the law, fewer than 1% of schools met the requirement that year.” Source: USA Today
If you happen to live in Maine and want to know if your school is one of the less than 1% that passed inspections, you may be out of luck. States don’t report which schools met the Child Nutrition Act requirement and which didn’t. They merely keep track of the figures. You may luck out and be able to obtain the information from your child’s school district but then again, you may not.
Again, I’m completely icked out by this. Yet one more reason why the kiddos get their own waste-free school lunch to take to school.
Photo: maveric2003/Flickr
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We as a nation have got to figure out a way to get healthy disease free meats to our schools to nourish our children. I admit, i send my children to school with their own home made lunches but there are so many children across America being fed meals lacking nourishment.