Dec 6, 2007 12:47 am US/Eastern
Politicans Outraged Over Cruddy Cafeterias
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
Strong words from some key state and national lawmakers after a recent
CBS4 I-Team investigation found South Florida schools are violating food safety laws.
For more than a decade,
CBS4 Consumer Investigative Reporter Al Sunshine has been tracking problems in school cafeterias; his latest cruddy cafeteria investigation prompted calls for tougher food safety laws from South Florida to Washington, DC.
From rats in the kitchen to overall filthy facilities, some local school cafeterias were deemed a threat to the health and safety of the students and immediately ordered shut down.
State and federal law require schools to make their cafeteria inspection reports available to anyone who asks for them. In fact federal law requires them to be posted. But when Sunshine asked several Miami-Dade and Broward school officials to see their health reports, they refused and ordered him off the property.
"It's really disturbing. It really is. It sends chills through my spine," said Congresswoman Debby Wasserman-Schultz.
After seeing the
CBS4 I-Team investigation report, Congresswomen Wasserman-Schultz began drafting new, tougher federal laws that will not only mandate that cafeteria reports be made available to parents, the new laws will also penalize school systems that fail to do so.
"If there isn't the ability to require the posting of those inspections and make sure the parents know whether that school cafeteria has failed that inspection or not, then we are potentially endangering our kids," said Wasserman-Schultz.
The
CBS4 I-Team investigation also uncovered a variety of loopholes in the school cafeteria inspection system.
Under federal law, they're supposed to be inspected at least twice a year. But federal agencies are not involved in the actual inspections, which is the job of local health inspectors. Local health departments say because of budget and manpower problems, school cafeterias are not inspected as often as federal law requires.
"We can't get to everything," said Trevor Cook with the Miami Dade Health Department. "We can only get to some of the schools some of the times."
In 1995 State Senator Alex Villalobos campaigned for a new state law mandating improved school cafeteria safety standards. Villalobos said he was shocked when he found out his law was quietly taken off the books with no public notice.
"Basically, what they did was they made the law go away," said Villalobos.
A recent national survey of 20 school cafeteria programs rated Miami Dade near the bottom of the list, calling it, "one of the worst performing school jurisdictions."
One of the biggest criticisms? Sanitation reports not available to the public and not posted on the internet for anyone to see them.
So now some state and national lawmakers are promising big changes so parents can really know what's happening behind the closed doors of their kids' school cafeterias.
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