Banned Pesticide Residues in School Lunches: Who Is Minding the Safety?

(Photo caption/ The problems of low-bid procurement under the Government Procurement Act for school nutritious lunches and of food ingredient safety have persisted for a long time. Hsinchu County Hukou Township Hexing Elementary School has been actively changing the status quo by using organic ingredients and supporting the local indigenous economy, while integrating the concepts of global warming and food miles into its curriculum. Photo/ Wang Wen-hao)

Oyster cabbage with five pesticides exceeding the limit, cucumbers with residues of acetamiprid and chlorpyrifos, and crispy chicken cutlets containing the banned drug chloramphenicol - this is the nutritious lunch children eat every day at noon, and it is also the food poisoning their bodies.

Do you still remember that in March and April of this year, the Consumer Protection Committee of the Executive Yuan conducted meat testing for nutritious lunches at elementary schools with their own kitchens? At that time, it was unexpectedly discovered that meat products with CAS certification had also lost their guarantee and were found to contain residues of veterinary drugs that must not be detected. This news once caused an uproar. The CAS certification system, which focuses only on the processing stage and does not manage the front-end raw materials, was asked to be reviewed and improved; whether agricultural and fishery products should establish a traceability system that consumers can check also gained attention.

Half a year later today, the Consumer Protection Committee again conducted spot checks on nutritious lunches. This time it no longer inspected schools, but instead inspected upstream food suppliers. The result showed no progress at all! Among 37 meat products, although fresh meat products were all qualified, four processed and prepared meat products (Heyi Food's Kyoto tenderloin, Zhonggang Food's crispy chicken cutlet, Yixing Food's meatballs, and Fuzhou Food's meatballs) were unqualified, all detected with chloramphenicol, which had been banned as early as the 91st year of the Republic of China.

Consumer protection official Ke Mei-qin explained that chloramphenicol is a broad-spectrum antibiotic often used to treat infectious diseases in livestock, poultry, and fish. However, because it can damage hematopoietic function, the Council of Agriculture has already prohibited its use in food-producing animals, and it can only be used to treat pet diseases. Long-term consumption by humans will certainly create a burden. "Whether the impact is deep or shallow, a banned drug is a banned drug, and operators have no reason to use it."

The 20 newly spot-checked fruits and vegetables were equally frown-inducing. Six vegetables were found to have pesticide residues, and three of them were actually snap beans, garland chrysanthemum, and cucumbers produced by the Madou District Farmers' Association, respectively detected with residues of Foduoning, Feikeli, and Yajianpei, and garland chrysanthemum was also found to have Huguiduo, which cannot be applied to it, while cucumbers had chlorpyrifos.

What most surprised consumer protection official Wu Zheng-xue was that oyster cabbage from Qinglai Store at the Taoyuan City Fruit and Vegetable Market was actually found to have excessive residues of five pesticides: acetamiprid, Beifenti, Saimaining, Baimaining, and Fujue. He said, "Whether or not the pesticide residues are due to early harvest, the problem is, why is it necessary to use so many kinds of pesticides? And these are all pesticides approved for use! Under such an agricultural policy, can we really protect children's food safety?"

(Transparency in the sources of nutritious lunch ingredients and the use of funds is very important. Hsinchu County Hukou Township Hexing Elementary School ensures lunch quality through ingredient/food waste management. Photo/ Wang Wen-hao)

The numbers of servings and lists provided by the operators are as follows:

1. Heyi Food's Kyoto tenderloin: 25 schools in Taipei City, 5,000 servings per day.
2. Yunlin County Zimao Fruit and Vegetable Production Cooperative's sweet peas: 59 schools in New Taipei and Taipei City, 35,000 servings per day.
3. Fuyao Fruits and Vegetables' baby bok choy: 43 schools in Taipei City, 34,700 servings per day.
4. Zhonggang Food's crispy chicken cutlet: 26 schools in Taoyuan, 10,000 servings per day.
5. Taoyuan City Fruit and Vegetable Market Qinglai Store's oyster cabbage: 20 schools in Taoyuan, 11,000 servings per day
6. Yixing Food's meatballs: 13,000 servings
7. Fuzhou Food's meatballs: 20-30 schools
8. Snap beans, garland chrysanthemum, and cucumbers produced by the Madou District Farmers' Association: 30 schools

The results of this spot check were reported on October 18 to the Ministry of Education, the Department of Health, and the Council of Agriculture, which handled the crisis separately. The Ministry of Education notified the education bureaus of each county and city, which forwarded the notice to the affected elementary schools, reminding them to ask the group meal companies to handle the matter, stop supplying the agricultural products found to have problems, and issue warnings through contract termination or "demerit points." However, because the amount of ingredients used in nutritious lunches is too large, Fu Wei-wei, section chief of the School Health Affairs Section of the Sports Administration, said that it was impossible to stop using all products from that supplier on this basis, and only the items already found to have problems could be banned.

Paradoxically, Zheng Wei-zhi, section chief of the Food Division of the Food and Drug Administration under the Department of Health, said frankly, "Problematic meat will not be made into only one product." By the same logic, besides baby bok choy, other fruits and vegetables from the same farm may also have excessive pesticides. But at present, the Department of Health has assigned local health bureaus, and interviews with the ten violating manufacturers are still ongoing. Only after the crux of the problem is traced can it be determined whether the Council of Agriculture should trace the production area upward; the Council of Agriculture also still needs to "further understand the situation of upstream producers and strengthen guidance." During this period, children eat "nutritious lunch" every day. How much more food that goes into their stomachs is poisoning their developing bodies?

Although the Consumer Protection Committee clearly stated that by November 17, the Department of Health, the Ministry of Education, and the Council of Agriculture must propose a clear improvement plan for nutritious lunches, how much can we really expect?

Today, when food safety is valued, many schools hope that nutritious lunches can use toxic-free agricultural livestock products and fruits and vegetables, yet they are constrained by the provisions of the Government Procurement Act: cases worth more than 100,000 yuan must be publicly tendered, and schools have no right to require the winning group meal companies to use toxic-free ingredients. Moreover, a nutritious lunch costs about 35 yuan per meal, and after deducting the company's labor costs and profit, it is frighteningly cheap. Such a low procurement price cannot afford toxic-free ingredients. And can the Government Procurement Act be untangled? That is within the scope of the Public Construction Commission.

The nutritious lunch storm has only just begun, and it will not improve immediately. In this food safety revolution, under the government's snail-paced efficiency, can parents who love their children still fail to wake up? When spending tens of thousands of yuan each month on cram school for their children, are parents also willing to spend 5 yuan more per day to ask schools to choose better group meal companies, with parents and teachers jointly supervising food safety? Or launch a "refuse to eat nutritious lunch" movement, using collective power to pressure the government, prompting revisions to the Government Procurement Act, or proposing stricter procurement requirements for nutritious lunch ingredients?

We full of expectation hope that someday in the future, the ingredients on children's plates will no longer be decided by price, and every day children can eat with peace of mind.

Further reading
Dear child, what do you eat for lunch?
Elizabeth Hukou on-site: Hexing Elementary School's mouth revolution

(When can we let children "eat with peace of mind" and "eat local" at school nutritious lunches? Photo/ Jiang Hui-xian)