Health Inspections In Our Schools

Ok, I know originally this was supposed to be health news, but it's so hard to leave this alone. When we go to a restaurant, we rely on the the restaurant having been inspected by the local health inspectors. We expect that they can pass these health inspections. We expect that the food will be cooked to the correct temperature and that we won't get sick from the food that we eat there. Generally health inspections are done on a twice yearly basis. At the end of last month, there was a news report about a person working for a catering company that was diagnosed with Hepatitis A after working for several celebrity parties. At the end of last year, there was an E Coli outbreak at Taco Bell restaurants around the nation. We as a nation are worried about food safety and the possibility of getting food poisoning. Yet a new report out by the Department of Agriculture shows that only about 10% of our nations school cafeterias have even one health inspection done each year. That's 1 in 10 school cafeterias that have health inspections at all! If less than 1 in 10 of our nations restaurants were getting health inspections, there would be a major public outcry. Yet the cafeterias where our kids eat their school lunches aren't getting inspected. The findings on those that are getting inspected are quite scary. The milk isn't staying cold, the food isn't staying hot. If you read the Safe Handling Instructions on a food container, it says keep raw meats and vegetables separate from cooked food. Yet this isn't happening in some schools either. Floors are filthy and need repair or handwashing stations are either not there or are not what is needed. All of these things leave the possibility of the food going bad, and our kids to get sick. Possibly very sick. According to the article on MSN (here) the number of inspections varies by state. Granted, 61% of school cafeterias got at least 2 health inspections, in New Mexico, there were no school cafeterias that went through any health inspections at all. In many states, it's not that there is no interest in doing a health inspection in the school cafeterias. There isn't enough money in the budget for the inspections to take place. Congress passed a bill requiring more health inspections, but the state budgets weren't increased to compensate. Now, school cafeteria workers are better trained than say your local McDonalds worker, but that's not to say that no one gets sick from eating at a school cafeteria. With how finances are in most states, I can understand why the needed changes haven't been made. We seem to have a recession coming, and a lot of states are running short in their budgets. However, we need to do something to make sure our kids are safe. Our kids are more vulnerable to getting seriously ill from food poisoning.