Is Your Child’s School Lunch a Lawsuit Waiting To Happen?

Earlier this summer, India faced a public school lunch crisis. In Chapra, 25 school children died after they consumed rice, soybeans and lentils infected with insecticides. The school’s headmistress, who fled from Chapra after the story broke, had insisted that the food be served even though the school’s cook told the headmistress that the food did not smell right. As it turned out, the oil used in the children’s lunch had been stored in containers that previously stored pesticides. Could this same negligence occur in the United States?

Considering the Current State of School Lunches in the US

The National School Lunch Act (NSLA) is a federal law which provides low-income students with low-cost or free lunches. I distinctly remember the disgusting slop that public schools passed off as “food” under the NSLA. There was never much variety. Nachos and tacos were served twice a week. The meat used in their tacos was gray and sickly-looking. The bologna sandwiches were only slightly better. Indeed, a study in 2009 found that fast food industries have higher standards for food safety than school lunch programs. That’s right: KFC and Jack-In-The-Box are safer than your local elementary school cafeteria.

Fortunately, in 2010, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act directed the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to issue new dietary standards for meals provided under the NSLA. The new standards go into effect in 2012 and 2013. Hopefully the new standards will actually result in real improvements. However, nutrition standards are only one of the many problems facing our children’s public school lunches.

Three Case Studies

One of the many problems with school lunches is that the NSLA is largely in the hands of apathetic bureaucrats. Three incidents should sufficiently highlight the issue.

1. E. Coli Outbreak
In 2003, a Washington state court found the Finley School District liable for E. Coli bacterial infected tacos which caused eleven schoolchildren to become sick. Although the school district attempted to blame the meat supplier for the E. Coli outbreak, the jury found that the cooks had undercooked the meat.

Finley underscores the fact that school districts do not merely supply the “food” our children eat. The court found that the District had been drained and rinsed the taco meat. Moreover, the District had added other ingredients to the meat, ingredients such as beans, seasonings and tomato paste. The District had changed the meat and thereby made the food served its own Frankenstein creation, independent of anything the meat supplier had done with it. In other words, school cooks have an active role in manufacturing the compost that they pass off as edible. School employees should remember this before attempting to assign blame to others.

2. Food Allergy
In 2005, Nicole Pace enrolled her daughter, Liana Pace, at Hillcrest Elementary School. Nicole Pace told school officers that her kindergartner was allergic to peanuts. Liana was served a peanut butter sandwich for lunch at the school cafeteria. Even though Liana protested that her mother forbid her from eating peanut butter, the cafeteria employees commanded her to eat the sandwich anyway. To the surprise of the cafeteria workers, Liana had an immediate reaction and was rushed to the hospital. When Liana returned, the school reacted by forcing Liana to sit at a table by herself. Liana interpreted her subsequent physical isolation as a punishment.

The Paces’ story represents the amount of control government workers have over our children. It is understandable that the cafeteria workers who fed Liana were not aware that Liana had an allergy to peanuts since the school administration had not notified those workers of her allergy. However, it is unacceptable that those workers would force a little girl to eat food she did not want to eat. The fact that Liana’s mother had not permitted her to eat peanut butter should have clued the workers to the fact that something other than picky eating habits was the source of Liana’s refusal to eat the sandwich.

3. Apathy in Public Schools

The final story is not a court case. The story is about a boy who had public school lunches because his parents paid the school for those lunches. One week, however, the boy’s parents forgot to pay for his lunch. The cafeteria refused to serve the boy lunch. The boy’s father had to berate the school’s principal for valuing profit over his son. What happened to the NSLA’s principle that hungry students cannot study?

By the way, that little boy was me.

The school headmistress who caused the deaths of twenty-five schoolchildren in India is not an isolated incident in a foreign country. The Chapra school headmistress is a reflection of some of the cafeteria workers and school administrator officials in our own country. Shouldn’t they be liable for their actions?