With the Child Nutrition Act reauthorization well underway in Congress, and given the recent concerns aired by a group of retired military officers that school lunches may be contributing to obesity and thus threatening future military recruitment, as well as the investigation by USA Today that found fast food restaurants use a higher quality of meat than our nation's public schools, perhaps it should be no surprise that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which administers the federal school lunch program, is trying to change the narrative of the quality of food they provide for US children to a more positive tone.To that end, today USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the department has "completed tough new food safety standards for ground beef purchased by the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) for Federal food and nutrition assistance programs including school lunches[,]" states the department news release.
The USA Today investigation broke out in December, 2009. At the time Vilsack promised to conduct an independent review of AMS's testing requirements for ground beef sent to schools. The new standards are the result of the completion of one of the series of initiatives Vilsack announced in Febraury, 2010 that are aimed to improve the safety of food purchased for nutrition programs, including school lunches.
USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service and the Agricultural Research Service started the review of food safety following the February announcement, and the new standards are the result of the joint review. The new requirements will be applicable starting July 1, 2010 to AMS contracts for ground beef purchases.
Vilsack states in the USDA news release that '"The health of our school children is a top priority at USDA, and today we are moving ahead quickly with plans announced earlier this year to ensure that food provided to nutrition programs is as safe and nutritious as possible . . . The new standards announced today ensure our purchases are in line with major private-sector buyers of ground beef and are part of our continued effort to employ the best scientific knowledge to increase the safety of our nutritional programs.'"'
According to the news release, the new standards continue the zero tolerance policy for E.coli o157H:7 and Salmonella. Additionally, the new AMS standards tighten microbiological testing protocols, increases sampling frequency for finished products to every 15 minutes, tightens "the microbiological upper specification and critical limits[,]" and institutes "additional rejection criteria for source trimmings used to manufacture AMS purchased ground beef."
We shall see what, if anything, these new standards mean for Congressional efforts to reauthorize the Child Nutrition Act.
To read the USDA news release, click here.
Posted: 05/14/10
