And The Dirtiest School Cafeterias Are ...

Report: D.C. And Hartford, Conn. Among Districts Lagging In Safety Inspections, Cleanliness Reporting

(WebMD)  Schools in Washington, D.C., and Hartford, Conn., are among those lagging in keeping up with safety inspections and cleanliness reporting for student cafeterias, concludes a report issued by a watchdog group Tuesday.

But Forth Worth, Texas, and four other school districts passed the group's test with the best overall scores.

The report did not measure actual food safety practices in cafeterias or count the number of disease outbreaks from contaminated food.

But it found that low-performing districts generally don't comply with federal laws requiring school cafeterias to be inspected at least twice per year; they were also cited for frequent violations of safety standards and for not making their results easily accessible to the public.

Ken Kelly, co-author of the report, says 20 major school districts inspected by the Center for Science in the Public Interest showed wide-ranging inconsistency in meeting health standards.

"It's a hodgepodge depending on where you are," says Kelly, a food safety attorney with the CSPI.

Here are the school districts with failing grades in the CSPI's report. The highest grade possible is 100:

1) Hartford, Conn., Grade: 37
2) Washington, D.C., Grade: 46
3) Rhode Island, Grade: 54
4) Dade County, Fla., Grade: 59
5) (tie) Hillsborough County, Fla., Grade: 60 
    (tie) Minneapolis, Grade: 60

Failing Grade

The report cites Hartford Public Schools for holding inspections only once per year, half as many as federal law has required since 2004. The CSPI said the district averages a national high of 2.7 health code violations per school and that it maintains no web site for disseminating results to parents.

Terry D'Italia, a spokesman for Hartford Public Schools, tells WebMD the district was "surprised and alarmed by the report."

D'Italia says the data in the report are over a year old and that major changes have occurred in the district over that time. He says schools are now inspected twice per year and that they earn an average score of 94 out of 100.

"The group that covers this report never actually set foot in the school cafeteria," says D'Italia, whose district serves more than 18,000 meals per day to 24,000 students.

"We're not trying to hammer schools, says Kelly. "We don't want local governments to wait until an outbreak occurs to get these things done."

Best Performers

Five school districts earned the group's best overall grades. The highest grade possible is 100.

1) Fort Worth, Texas, Grade: 80
2) King County, Wash., Grade: 79
3) Houston, Grade: 78
4) Maricopa County (includes Phoenix), Ariz., Grade: 77
5) City and County of Denver, Grade: 75

Phyllis Propes, director of child nutrition services for the Forth Worth district's 126 schools, says the district does "in-depth" training on food and personal safety for managers and workers.

"We started this a long time before most districts did," Propes tells WebMD.

Best of the Rest

Of the remaining 10 districts included in the report, three earned "passing" grades, in the low 70s: DeKalb County, Ga. (73), Farmington Valley Health District, Conn. (72), and Virginia (72).

Barely passing, with grades in the 60s, were: Fulton County, Ga. (includes Atlanta); Dallas; Philadelphia; Chicago; the city and county of San Francisco; and Montgomery County, Md.

Five school jurisdictions were considered out of the running because of a lack of information: Los Angeles, Cleveland, Boston, New York City, and Florida.

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SOURCES: Center for Science in the Public Interest: "Making the Grade: An analysis of food safety in school cafeterias." Ken Kelly, staff attorney, CSPI. Terry D'Italia, spokesman, Hartford Public Schools, Hartford, Conn. Phyllis Propes, director, child nutrition services, Fort Worth Independent School District, Texas

Katie Couric reported that U.S. schools serve 29 million meals a day and that "in an average year, 733 students will get food poisoning at school". My hyperbole alarm went off when I heard these numbers. A school year of 180 days makes for 5.2 billion meals served each year. Even assuming that every case of food poisoning comes from food served by the cafeteria (surely some come from snacks and from bagged lunches, but let's ignore this), that means that there is 1 case of food poisoning for every 7.1 MILLION meals served! Suddenly this scary report seems to be absurdly alarmist.

To put this danger in perspective, consider that there are almost as many U.S. school meals served each year as people on the entire planet (6.5 billion). This means that the risk of a single school meal making your child sick is less than something happening to 800 people on the entire planet in a single year, like winning $100,000 or more in a lottery. For something more precise, consider that (according to Wikipedia's article on lightning), about 2000 people are injured or killed each year by a lightning strike, or 1 in 3.3 million. This means your child has twice the chance of being struck by lightning sometime this year than getting food poisoning by eating at school today. Better keep those kids indoor at all times!

I wish CBS News would hire someone to examine the numbers tossed off in these reports and do a little sanity checking before they air stories designed to horrify parents.

[ddanner728]

Kudos to LazyMedia for setting the record straight on school cafeteria statistics. Schools are the safest place to eat statistically just as school buses are the safest form of land transportation. Because we do maintain such a significant safety record in both areas, we are frequent targets of those who single out the rare incident and inflate them in a meager attempt to make them newsworthy.

Shame on you Katie for your commentary "yuck" after the story aired rather than giving it the proper perspective. One food poisoning in 7.1 meals served is the best food safety record in the industry.

[ddanner728]

I apologize for the typographical error: The last sentence should read: One food poisoning in 7.1 MILLION meals served is the best food safety record in the industry.

[luciamia1]

A little nostalgia here. We raised our sons in Cabot, Vermont, home of the world's greatest Cheddar. The village school in the 80s had a cafeteria where people took pride in what they served the town's children. I remember that parents were invited to eat lunch with their kids. And what a feast it often was. We ate food prepared by the local "lunch ladies" from crops grown locally. There was even turkey from a local farmer. We never worried about what our sons were eating or how clean the place was. I was saddened to see the pictures on the website of kids eating out of plastic containers in rooms florescent-lit like a state prison dining hall. But, maybe that was supposed to make me think that, despite the dire lack of ambiance, that maybe death lurks in that glooey food and those cheap plastic containers. I also noticed that "Rhode Island" was given bad marks. Does that mean the reporter and crew went to every single school in RI? These aren't statistics but rather "random samplings" tarted up to look like the real thing. Shame on CBS. Frightening parents with young children may not be the best ratings tactic.

[asor1-2009]

luciamia1, I loved your post. Made me want to go back to Cabot real soon.
As usual, the issue of dirty school cafeterias is blown way out of proportion for the sake of media hype. The numbers are probably not far from the proportion of food poisonings that result from HOME prepared meals. i.e.Thanksgivings Day food that sits out for hours is an annual culprit.

[sesavjo]

The FDA needs to be just as diligent with schools that serve food as they are restraunts!! I'm not sure exactley who is responsible for the schools cafiteria(health dept.,FDA), but there needs to be the same safety guidelines. For the parents, if you are concerned with the safety of the cafiteria in your child school, it's real easy.....BROWN BAG IT!! Make your childs lunch, not only are you in control of the way it's made(saftey wise), but it's much healthier for your children!! That's common sense folks!!!!

[olgreyghost]

Brown bagging it sounds like a good idea - but only if the school trusts the parent to make a good lunch and some schools don't. Safest yet, keep your kids home and educate them there. It's easy, it's legal, and there is one heck of a lot less government interference in your lives...

[factcheck1]

The reporting on the school food safety story on the news last evening was on par with the President Bush/National Guard error of the past.
The report being covered evaluated school food safety inspection in .1% of schools. The report uses criteria that schools have no control over - like health department inspections. According to the U.S. Government Accounting Office outbreaks of foodborne illness in school are rare. GAO reported in the more than 33 million meals served per day to school children through the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program over a full year, there were only eight outbreaks reported in 1997 and nine in 1998. GAO found that 195, or about 3 percent, of the total 7390 foodborne outbreaks reported nationwide, between 1990 and 1999, occurred in schools. GAO documented that other foodservice establishments are much more likely than schools to be implicated in a case of foodborne illness.
School nutrition programs have no control over the number of inspectors available at a given health department. Schools are not in control of what Food Code they use. Food Codes are adopted by state legislatures. The same food codes are used in restaurants and other foodservice establishments. I implore CBS News to be more thorough before running a story as full of holes as the one they aired last night.

[drfood-2009]

Through the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program over 33 million healthful and nutritious meals are served every school day to America%u2019s children. Both programs have exceptional and long-standing records of serving safe food. Preparing and serving safe and nutritious meals is the highest priority of the nation%u2019s school nutrition professionals. Through training programs for members, legislative advocacy and collaboration with government, association and private sector partners, the School Nutrition Association (SNA) strives for the safest possible school meals.

The School Nutrition Association makes food safety and sanitation training available to all of its members: from district foodservice directors to school kitchen managers and their staff. SNA%u2019s certification program requires ten hours of food safety and sanitation training and includes requirements for continuing education. Over 24,000 school nutrition professionals have this certification.

I have observed safe food handling practices in many schools throughout the U.S. and I have full confidence in the safety AND nutrition quality of school meals!

[carol718]

As a Food Service Manager in Miami-Dade County for 31 years,I have seen countless kitchens during my travels as a Food Service Monitor in the summer months. Miami-Dade County Schools Food and Nutrition Department is dedicated to the well being of our students. This includes every one from our Director to Region Coordinators. Food Service Managers work with the Health Department and Region Coordinators to insure we follow up on all problems found on a school site. Each of us is required to take training classes on food safety. We take pride in our job and work surroundings, wanting only the best for our students. Miami-Dade County School Food Service Department does "get things done".

Carol Green
Food Service Manager
Miami-Dade County Florida

[landersonn4-2009]

Thanks a lot for saying that school meals and cafeterias are dirty and can make you sick. Have you been in one lately and ate the food, too. I do every day. And so does my daughter. I work for a school district in Pennsylvania. I cook for a middle school in that district. Our recipes are very healthy and made from scratch. We run three lines to get the kids through fast and to offer a wide variety of choices. We make healthy food and offer lots of choice of fresh fruits and vegetables. We serve three quarters of the enrollment in the school. We get lots of compliments from students and teachers. And yes our kitchen is very clean. We get 100% on our inspections.
A school kitchen is usually cleaner and safer than any restaurants, and yes I have worked in restaurants before, its a very big difference.
You need to look into things more closely.

[cathyhowsare]

You have got to be kidding me. You based your judgement of all school cafeterias across the United States by the schools you visited in Connecticut and Washington D.C. I have been a foodservice director for a school district in Iowa for 17 years and we have never had any bad inspections in our 8 buildings. I eat in my cafeterias every day and so do everyone of my staff members. We have 63% of our student body eating our hot lunch alone, this doesn't include our ala carte offerings. We have staff and parents across the entire district who eat hot lunch and/or ala carte items daily. I think you should come to Iowa and see how MOST schools operate and give us the POSITIVE REPORT that we deserve. School districts across the U.S. are much cleaner than most restaurants across the U.S. and I don't see you bad mouthing them. I haven't ever heard of a school district being shut down due to their health inspection, have you???? Next time, have your facts correct before doing any stories. Why is it, schools are getting the rap for fat kids & bad food, but what happens outside of the 8 hours we have the students doesn't seem to matter...... Let's rethink this, shall we?????

[darren1dww]

I am a Food Services director in a Utah district. I have seven schools all get two yearly inspections and pass with nearly 100 percent. Our schools also have a HACCP based food safety plan and all full time employees are Serv Safe certified. I also worked as a manager in several different resturants for 16 years if you want to see bad health inspections you should be looking at the resturant industry not the schools. Our school district has never had a case of food borne illness there's your saftey record. Dw