Nearly half of public school cafeterias in New York City racked up at least one dangerous health code violation this past year, including evidence of rats and mice, roaches and flies.
An analysis of city Health Department data conducted by student journalists at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism found 1,150…
There’s good news for millions of children who participate in the program daily: The National School Lunch Program’s strict food safety standards work.
A study led by researchers from the University of Connecticut and the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that food safety standards for ground beef supplied to the program are highly effective in…
ELK POINT, SD — It would probably not be accurate to say Professor Mindy Brashears speaks with a Texas twang or that ABC’s attorney Dane Butswinkas has a Richmond dialect, but…
Controversial federal legislation to limit funding for subsidized school lunches and change some of the program’s nutritional standards passed a House committee on a 20-14 vote May 18, and the proposal is being hammered by critics who believe it would endanger the health of American school children. 
The bill’s sponsor, U.S. Rep. Todd Rokita (R-IN),…
I spent a couple of hours last week watching Thomas James (Tom) Vilsack wrap the House Education and Workforce Committee around his little finger. It came on his 2,338th day as United States Secretary of Agriculture. He is the boss of 85,000 USDA employees. Those who promote the narratives for such events said the Secretary…
When it comes to the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), the partisan brouhaha has been about the menu. Later this year, however, Congress will reauthorize the Healthy and Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010, mostly by agreeing to pick up the check. The outline of just such an ending became clear this week when the…
According to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report published last week, the ground beef supplied to school lunches contains “significantly less” Salmonella contamination than products sold on the commercial market. USDA’s Economic Research Service examined the impact of food-safety standards imposed by the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) on suppliers of ground beef to the National…
A provision included in the $1.1-trillion spending bill Congress passed last week and which is now headed to the president’s desk prevents poultry processed in China from being used in the National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, Child and Adult Care Food Program and Summer Food Service Program (Section 736 of Division A…
For anyone who still gets the printed version of The New York Times, the pretty magazine among all those advertising inserts is worth a read today. It contains a smartly illustrated story entitled, “How School Lunch Became the Latest Political Battleground,” by Nicholas Confessore. It can also be found online here. Confessore, who was…
New language offered by the House Appropriations Committee would allow schools than can demonstrate economic hardship to obtain a temporary waiver from new nutrition standards for the upcoming 2014-15 school year. In 2015, the standards might undergo revisions. Language released Monday by the committee said the waiver language was included at the request of local…
When you think about the food being served in school cafeterias nationwide, do the words meat recall, animal abuse, unsanitary conditions and slaughter plant shutdowns come to mind? Perhaps they should. A few weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture temporarily shut the doors of Central Valley Meat (CVM), a dairy cow slaughter plant in…
