School food: Don't dismiss kids' complaints about school lunches so quickly

Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. The IRE Journal, Nov/Dec 2002 by Jackson, David

FEATURES

Our story was launched not by a tip, but by a trickle of small, easy-to-ignore complaints from Chicago parents who said their kids were getting sick from school food.

But after a six-month investigation, we reached an unexpected conclusion: There are dangerous flaws in America's food safety system.

Specifically, the number of U.S. schoolfood illness outbreaks has been rising since 1990, and improved reporting measures don't account for the change. Records gathered from several sources detailed the hidden story of the largest U.S. food-borne outbreak in recent history, a 1998 case that sickened more than 1,200 students in at least seven states.

The Tribune's two-part report led to a joint U.S. Senate-House hearing and an investigation by the U.S. General Accounting Office. (The GAO, in report GAO-02-669T, confirmed the newspaper's findings.) At the spring congressional hearings, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the reversal of a key, industry-backed confidentiality regulation that blocked state and local authorities from access to food company shipping records during an outbreak. Now, having records available will enable local authorities to trace contaminated food and protect children from further harm.

In addition, the stories prompted a swift and sweeping overhaul of the Chicago school system's food contracts and safety practices.

Contaminated school meals are important because children whose immune systems are still developing can be severely injured by pathogens that give adults only mild indigestion. It's also important to remember that food safety is a sprawling topic that touches everyday lives and raises national security concerns.

The safety of America's food is overseen by a complex array of federal, state and local agencies. The fractured government inspection and health system seemed at first like a regulatory maze, but the reporting trick was simple: Take advantage of the chaos by directing queries and freedom of information requests to several federal, state and local government agencies. Information withheld by one may be released by another.

First, some reporting basics:

* How do you learn about food borne illness outbreaks?

Federal, state, county and municipal public health departments all may investigate specific outbreaks. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publishes on its Web site (www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/outbreak/ us_outb.htm) summary data on the more than 5,000 food-borne illness outbreaks reported to the CDC by state and local health authorities since 1990. The Web site shows the month and year of any food-borne illness outbreak reported to the CDC, the state where it took place, the number of people injured and the type of food and pathogen implicated. I tested and explored this database - which has many shortcomings- in numerous conversations with government epidemiologists.

To get more detail on specific outbreaks, request the government case files. If the CDC investigates an outbreak, its epidemiologists will compile reports, ingredient matrixes, email and correspondence, patient food histories and laboratory test results. The CDC did not respond properly to Tribune FOIA requests, but CDC records sometimes were duplicated in state and local case files. Because outbreak case files contain private information on victims, I asked agencies to redact personally identifying information on children and private citizens.

* Who inspects the factories where food is made?

Again, there are many layers of government oversight. On the federal level, the U.S. Department of Agriculture oversees plants that use meat, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is in charge of non-meat plants. Publicly available records from these federal agencies include inspection reports, citations, fine and seizure records, as well as case files on specific recalls linked to outbreaks. FOIA-requested case files pertaining to USDA-overseen recalls of bacteria-contaminated meat took two to six months for that agency to produce.

Look at the recall listings posted on the Web sites of the U.S. Agriculture Department (www.fsis.usda.gov/OA/recalls/ rec_summ.htm) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (www.fda.gov/opacom/ Enforce.html). In and of itself, a recall doesn't indicate an unsafe factory: Food can be recalled if the packaging labels contain harmless errors or the water weight is off, and a factory can be punished with a recall because it unwittingly accepts contaminated food from a downstream supplier. But a close study of the lists may yield cases that make you ask, "What happened here?"

To learn whether a particular food plant is infested with rodents, cited for using spoiled meat or equipped with rust-caked machinery, also request the inspection records and case files of state health and agricultural agencies, and county and municipal public health departments.

Request inspection and enforcement records from federal, state and local environmental protection agencies.

Ask to see local building and fire department records on the factories that interest you. Sometimes separate inspections are conducted by local electrical and water divisions.