School Lunch at Risk for Years

The U.S. Agriculture Department has for years had problems ensuring that beef supplied to the national school-lunch program meets food-safety standards, federal auditors' reports show, suggesting more widespread problems than those that triggered the biggest food recall in U.S. history.

In reports dating back to 2003, the USDA Office of Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office cited the USDA's lunch-program administrators and inspectors for weak food-safety standards, poor safeguards against bacterial contamination, and choosing lunch-program vendors with known food-safety violations. Auditors singled out problems with controls over E. coli and salmonella contamination.

In a 2003 report, the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, said "195, or about 3%, of the total of 7,390 foodborne outbreaks that were reported nationwide, between 1990-99, occurred in schools." The GAO traced about half of 40 large outbreaks to poor sanitation in school kitchens.

The reports appear to contradict USDA and meat-industry assertions that violations at the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co. plant in Chino, Calif., which voluntarily recalled 143 million pounds of ground meat Feb. 17, were an "isolated incident," as officials said at the time. That plant, the second-largest provider of beef to the school-lunch program in terms of pounds, has been singled out by the USDA and animal-rights groups for food-safety-related violations dating back at least a decade. Last week, the USDA put at least two employees on paid leave of absence during its investigation of problems at Hallmark/Westland, according to an official of the union that represents federal food inspectors.

Read the full Wall Street Journal story here.