Congress will hold a hearing this month on the safety of U.S. school meal programs, Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin announced Tuesday.
Durbin said the call for a congressional hearing was spurred by a Tribune investigation published in December that found unsafe practices in the factories that make school meals and in the kitchens and cafeterias where they are warmed and served.
The series “raised issues that have to be addressed,” Durbin said. “We want to examine how we can improve the federal oversight of the food served to schoolchildren.”
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The April 30 hearing will examine the frequency and types of illness outbreaks from school food and the ability of government health agencies to protect children from contamination, Durbin said. It will be held with the Senate government oversight committee and the House Subcommittee on Government Efficiency.
School food illness outbreaks have become increasingly frequent across the country during the 1990s, the Tribune found. More and more school districts–especially in poor areas–are turning to private contractors to plan menus, order food and oversee kitchens and cafeterias. But the contractors often do not disclose where they are getting their food and rarely provide inspection reports on those plants.
When the worst happens and school lunch suppliers deliver contaminated meals, the federal government’s recall system offers a flimsy safeguard for children, the Tribune found. Industry-backed confidentiality rules block state and county authorities from getting company shipping records so they can trace the food and protect children from further harm. And the three key federal agencies involved in school food illness outbreaks–the Agriculture Department, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention–do not share critical information with each other.
Durbin said Tuesday that schools should be informed of the identities and safety records of factories that provide food to students. And he said school officials should be more quickly and effectively involved in recalls of tainted food.
“It is clear that the complex array of federal food safety programs doesn’t adequately protect America’s schoolchildren,” said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group. “At a minimum, federal agencies need the ability to immediately recall contaminated food, instead of relying on voluntary recalls. And Congress should look at the need to create a unified inspection system.”
Jeremy Russell, director of communications for the National Meat Association, said he hoped Congress would use the hearings to review the microbiological standards applied to ground beef purchased for the National School Lunch Program. Russell said many industry officials want to eliminate the strict zero-tolerance standards for bacteria such as salmonella because the standards do not effectively assure plants are sanitary or safe.
Plants that sell frozen beef to the National School Lunch Program violated food safety rules at rates higher than the industry as a whole, according to the Tribune’s computer analysis of Agriculture Department data. About 15 percent of school food is provided through the program, and the rest is purchased by schools on the open market.
In December, after the Tribune’s two-part report ran, Chicago schools chief Arne Duncan announced a series of reforms to improve the cleanliness of kitchens and the safety of meals.
Duncan’s staff oversaw fast-track repairs of schools cited by the Tribune for having peeling lead-based paint in their lunchrooms or kitchens. New contract rules were implemented requiring school food providers to disclose where the meals they use were made and whether those factories were cited for health-code violations.
School officials also held food safety training sessions for cafeteria managers and principals.