Schools Skip Out on HACCP
Schools are skipping out on thier responsibility to prepare food safety plans.
Under the Richard B. Russell School Lunch Act of 2004, all schools were to have HACCP plans in place years ago.
www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/governance/...Policy.../2005-01-10.pdf
Here below is a perfect example of why. Schools that do not have a monitoring system in place are in default of federal guidelines. Whether the temperature abuse problem that led to this outbreak was wholly caused or partially caused by the school, the lack of temperature controls for 4 hours and failure to test incoming product temperature is what HACCP was meant to correct.
While retailers demand food safety management systems for suppliers, the food service, institutions and retail firms at the vulnerable end of the supply chain have resisted developing food safety systems.
The Richard B Russell act was supposed to fix this in schools, but there are few if any schools who have heeded this requirement. The political protection that schools enjoy (being part of the county, just like the health departments) is partially to blame, as is lack of funding for health departments at the county level. It’s a Federal Program! An “unfunded mandate”, or so say the health departments. The insulation that retailers and food service firms enjoy from the political action campaigns of the National Restaurant Association is also wrong.
Here we see the convergence of hazards from the retail level and the school coming together to make pedople ill. All of them should thank God it was not E coli O157:H7. In any event this outbreak was easily preventable.
When will the consumer become the focus of food safety?
Well it seems only when the restaurants and schools who cause these outbreaks are sued, and so let the lawsuits fly.
Wake up people!
ILLINOIS: Merle's owner decries 'reckless' health report
04.mar.11
Evanston Review
Karen Berkowitz
http://www.pioneerlocal.com/evanston/news/3097534,ev-merles-criticizes-health-report-030411-s1.article
Thanks to http://barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu/barfblog
The owner of Merle's BBQ Restaurant in Evanston Friday decried the Evanston Health Department's "rush to judgment" in blaming the restaurant for the outbreak of foodborne illness after an event Feb. 16 at Haven Middle School.
Merle's owner Larry Huber said the restaurant had no control over how the food was served after it dropped off the food order.
"The event was not a fully catered event, but a drop-and-go delivery," said Huber. "If it had been a fully catered event, we would have had the appropriate staff and equipment to maintain the presentation and quality."
One of the 30 people who reportedly became ill after eating the food, served "buffet style" during parent-teacher conference night, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the eatery.
The lawsuit quoted the findings of the Evanston Health Department, as summarized in a Feb. 24 press release that was posted on the city's website and reported on in the media.
(This is an excellent study on Clostridium perfringens and worth reading)
The Health Department identified unsafe food handling and temperature storage at both Merle's and Haven Middle School as possible causes and concluded "that it's unlikely the exact cause of the outbreak will be determined."
The food was prepared at Merle's, 1727 Benson Ave., and delivered to Haven Middle School, 2417 Prairie Ave., where it was served without a heating source between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m., according to the Health Department.
Huber said he was told by a Health Department manager that none of the samples taken from Merle's tested positive for “Clostridium perfringens”, which was determined to be the cause of the outbreak.
Huber was informed the restaurant did not take hourly time and temperature logs, but he contends the practice is not required by the health codes of either the state of Illinois or the city of Evanston.
According to Huber, the restaurant was in full compliance of the requirement that foods prepared and then cooled for later serving be labeled with the time and date they are made.
Eric Palmer, communications director for the city of Evanston, said Friday the city has no comment and stands behind the statement issued last week.
Mr. Costa,
I am offended by your comments about schools skipping out on HACCP. Have you researched the country to find out how many programs have a HACCP plan and are using it? I didn't see any research data in your article. There are food safety plans in place. It may not be as extensive as you have found but it is better than it was 5 years ago. I am proud of my district, we won NSF's Leadership Award in 2009 for our HACCP plan. We are the first school district in the country to win this award. There are also 3 of us on staff that are now HACCP certified ( we took your class in Atlanta last year). Food service directors are faced with many issues and while you may think that food safety is lacking, I invite you to visit my district where HACCP is alive and well.
Eileen Staples,Food Service Director
Greenville County Schools
Greenville, SC
What the author of the article failed to note is that the School Food Safety Act that was passed in 2004 addressed the foods served to the students through the federally funded school lunch and breakfast program. That 2004 law does not apply to any other school related food event. The event that was suspected as the source of the outbreak would not fall under the mandated program of temperature monitoring or even involve the staff that oversees that program at the school. Therefore discrediting the entire first half of the article.
Dear Troy I appreciate your comments but putting yourself in a box because of the way the regulation is written may be comfortable but it isn't effective at reducing risks. The spirit of the thing is to have a HACCP system and if you are just going to limit it to breakfast and lunch when other foods are served at the school would be nonsense. This could have been kids at this event just as easily as parents. What methods do your schools use to prevent foodborne illness may I ask? Its a mindset more so than a code requirement matter.
R. E. Costa
Roy,
I could not agree with you more! I just get a little tired with the media lumping all the school programs together when they are really very separate activities that are not related. A school breakfast/lunch food program ran by paid professional staff being lumped in with an after school pot luck, or PTA buffet for the teachers during conferences, or the school concession stand during a ball game is in no way apples to apples.
I always encourage all the kitchen staff at our school facilities that I give presentations and do inspections at to get out of their "box/kitchen" and get food safety throughout the entire facility. Most find this next to impossible to accomplish do to multiple road blocks.
Where they see the problem the most is with the administration. School food managers and the food professional staff usually have no control over their kitchens "after" hours. They will come in the morning after a booster club soup supper or spaghetti feed to a mess. They usually spend at least the first hour cleaning what wasn't cleaned from the night before. Complaints to the administration will typically fall on deaf ears.
As a part of our inspections (unfortunately only one per year usually), we review the HACCP plans at the schools for their breakfast/lunch programs. Check records, review temp. logs and check SOP's...for the most part, school managers get it and they endorse the federally mandated HACCP program. Trying to get the rest of the school to buy in on this is an uphill battle that is up against the "this is the way we have always done it, and no one has ever gotten sick" mindset.
When is that last time we have ever heard of a food inspection done at a school concession stand during a football/basketball/wrestling meet, a chili feed or a soup supper? A very large quantity of food is sold at an event like this with absolutely no oversight and in some cases very little regard for food safety. Unfortunately, with no threat of a food inspection, food safety can be easily overlooked. From a regulatory standpoint, my hands are tied when it comes to the extra-curricular activities at schools....until there is an outbreak!
Sorry for the rant!!!!