What are the invisible food safety problems in school lunches (Part 1)

In May, Chiayi was rocked by reports that school lunch fruit was small in quantity and poor in quality, with even cases of rot and mold that boggled the mind. In fact, beyond these visible problems with ingredient quality, children's school lunches harbor many more "invisible food safety" issues, including: pesticide and veterinary drug residues, additives in processed foods, and whether soy products are made from feed-grade genetically modified soybeans. Yet few parents ask about these things, or perhaps they simply do not know how to start caring.

Ever since the school lunch poisoning incident broke out in November 2011, the Taichung chapter of the Homemakers United Foundation has made the safety of school lunch ingredients one of its areas of concern; after all, only when children can eat at school with peace of mind can mothers feel at ease. Besides taking part in the "Taichung City School Lunch Health Promotion Committee," both school teachers and children's parents need all the more to understand exactly how the health bureaus in each locality safeguard school lunch quality, and whether their methods are actually effective. In early May, the Taichung chapter of the Homemakers United Foundation held a "School Lunch Ingredient Safety Symposium," where we specifically examined the current school lunch ingredient sampling and testing mechanism and interpreted the public authorities' test results on site, so that the teachers and principals handling school lunches could understand whether school food safety can truly set minds at ease.

Ingredient sampling failure rate Pesticide exceedances exposed

1. Sampled school vegetables failure rate higher than at collection centers

In 2011, the Consumer Protection Committee of the Executive Yuan sampled 57 school lunch ingredients, and 10 failed, a failure rate of 17.5%. Among them, 6 vegetable samples were found to have pesticide residues exceeding the limit, accounting for three-tenths of the 20 vegetable samples tested, while 4 processed meat products were found to contain residues of chloramphenicol, enrofloxacin, or florfenicol veterinary drugs that must not be detected under law, making up the poisoned lunch incident that stunned all of Taiwan that year.

In 2013, the Ministry of Health and Welfare conducted pesticide residue testing on school lunch agricultural products, sampling 44 samples from 15 elementary and junior high school nutritious lunches and 5 ingredient suppliers across Taiwan. As a result, 4 samples were found to have pesticide residues exceeding the limit, a failure rate of nearly 10%.

Local health bureaus are the main units responsible for sampling and testing school lunch ingredients. Each year, local health bureaus draft that year's sampling plan based on the previous year's high-risk fruit and vegetable situation. In 2012, the Taoyuan County Health Bureau sampled 28 schools and group meal providers, testing 16 vegetable samples and 27 meat samples. As a result, 3 vegetable samples failed, a failure rate of 18.7%. At the time, reports noted that "when the Agriculture and Food Agency tested commercially sold GAP (Good Agricultural Practice) and CAS vegetables, the failure rate was only 1-2%, and school lunch vegetables are also required to provide pesticide test certificates, yet the vegetable failure rate reached as high as 18.7%, which greatly shocked the health authorities." In December 2013, the Taoyuan County Health Bureau inspected and sampled nutritious lunch ingredient suppliers, group meal providers, and ingredients used in school kitchens, testing 56 samples in total, of which 1 passion fruit, 1 green bean, and 1 small mustard green failed, a failure rate of 5.36% (out of 24 fruit and vegetable samples tested), but banned drugs were detected and exceedances of seven times the limit were found. However, the failure rate from this round of testing was closer to the failure rate at field collection centers.

2. Both the variety and number of ingredient samples are insufficient Few samples of staples and fruit

Looking at the types of school lunch ingredients sampled by the Taichung City Health Bureau in 2013, only 41 fruit and vegetable samples, 17 meat samples, and 3 processed food samples were tested; no staples (rice or noodle products) were sampled, and eggs, which are often used in lunches, along with fish, squid, clams, and other aquatic products that occasionally appear, were not sampled at all, so whether children have eaten aquatic products with veterinary drug residues has simply not been checked at all. In addition, from 2012 to 2013, the Taichung City Health Bureau found a failure rate of 14-18% in commercially sold noodle products. School lunch staples occasionally appear in the form of commercially sold rice noodles, flat rice noodles, oil noodles, white noodles, and spaghetti, yet the health bureau did not sample these at all either.

Generally speaking, compared with vegetables, fruit tends to have higher pesticide residue levels. Farmers also often say, "Without chemicals, fruit yields nothing." According to 2011-2012 monitoring data on pesticide residues in commercially sold agricultural products in central Taiwan, of 69 fruit samples in 2011, 41 were found to have pesticide residues, a detection rate of 59.4%. In 2012, of 46 fruit samples, 34 were found to have pesticides, a detection rate of 73.9%. From the above data, it can be seen that the proportion of pesticide residues in fruit is quite high, yet for school lunch fruit, only 1 sample was tested for pesticide residues in 2013, and only 3 samples have been tested so far in 2014. The current Taichung City Education Bureau has budgeted a subsidy for schoolchildren's lunch fruit, with each schoolchild receiving a subsidy of 6 yuan per week. With such a sluggish single-digit number of samples, it is clear that no matter how good the policy's intent, it cannot set parents' minds at ease.

3. Lunch suppliers receive the "Safe Food" certification but the food is not nearly reassuring enough

In 2013, the Taichung City Health Bureau sampled 62 school lunch ingredients, of which 8 failed the fruit and vegetable pesticide residue test, accounting for 19.5% of the 41 fruit and vegetable samples tested. In short, pesticide exceedances or banned drugs occurred in nearly one-fifth of cases. What shocked us even more was that these non-compliant school lunch suppliers were all "Safe Food" certification holders accredited by the Taichung City Health Bureau, yet the health bureau took no action at all regarding the violations after the suppliers obtained certification. As a result, only after our foundation submitted an article to the media titled "Excessive Pesticide Residues in School Lunches More Rampant Than at Ding Wang" and raised serious questions did the health bureau revise the "demerit point" exit mechanism in its certification system. After our foundation further questioned that the "demerit point mechanism" had no binding effect on suppliers, the health bureau director, when visiting our foundation, agreed that certified suppliers should indeed be strictly bound, and therefore promised that once a violation occurred (for example, an ingredient failing inspection), certification would be immediately revoked. But months later, these suppliers still had not had their certification revoked because of this, and we do not know where the city government's authority lies.

4. More than a month after ingredient test results come out, schools still do not know

In March of this year, Fengtian Elementary School found that its wrapped A-choy (Taiwanese lettuce) had 4 pesticides exceeding the limit and contained 1 banned drug. When our foundation called the school to ask in early May, the lunch secretary did not know the test results. This situation shows that the notification efficiency of the health bureau and education bureau regarding problematic fruits and vegetables is extremely poor, which also leaves the school unable to promptly respond to and handle the matter with the supplier. Only when public authorities promptly notify schools of failed test results do schools have the "bargaining chip" to promptly demand that suppliers improve, or even demand compensation for the damaged rights and interests of teachers and students, so as to maintain the quality and safety of school lunches. However, the extremely poor notification efficiency shows that the education bureau has not considered its important role as the school's backing, leaving the entire responsibility for maintaining school lunch quality to school administration. For schools, which are consumers but whose meal supply for the whole school depends on suppliers, this is an unbearable burden.