Author: And people
01
Nutritious meals become "problem meals"
For many children who leave home to study, this advice from their parents must be no stranger -
"Order less takeaway, don't eat street food, and eat in the cafeteria."
Because most parents have a consensus: takeaways and roadside stalls are "not clean" and are easy to eat bad stomachs.
But now, school canteens, which have always been advertised as nutrition and hygiene, have become the hardest hit areas for food safety problems.
Recently, in a school in Fengqiu City, Henan Province, there was a large-scale food poisoning incident, which caused an uproar on the Internet.
On November 23, 2021, students at Qicheng Middle School in Fengqiu County, Henan Province, went to the canteen for lunch as usual, and today the school's nutritious menu is risotto and tofu.
Unlike breakfast and dinner, school lunches are not made by the school cafeteria, but by a "nutritious meal" that is customized and distributed by an outsourced delivery company for children.
But what I didn't expect was that after eating the "nutritious lunch" on this day, the children had symptoms such as dizziness and vomiting.
More than 30 students who were unfortunate enough to be recruited were rushed to the hospital and diagnosed with acute gastroenteritis, which is a "foodborne disease".
Students who had just returned home from the infusion said they had started to have stomachaches after more than an hour after lunch and still felt nauseous.
When asked if the school lunch tasted abnormal that day, the students whispered the truth: tofu steamed, meat a little fishy.
Parents who arrived at the hospital did not expect that their children would suffer from food poisoning while eating a so-called balanced lunch.
After the vomiting incident broke out, Principal Wang of Qicheng Middle School also accepted an interview with reporters, he choked up to express his guilt and heartache for the students, and then he could not stop hiding his face and crying about "changing the food delivery company".
Looking at the principal's weak voice, some netizens sarcastically said: Are students eating nutritious meals or corrupt meals?
What's more, just after the students were admitted to the hospital with food poisoning, the company continued to deliver meals for two days as usual.
Parents who learned of this rushed to the school gate the next day, stopped the food truck and protested that the child had a problem eating, and he must not be allowed to send it again!
In fact, this is not the first time that the lunch at Qicheng Middle School has been criticized for having a problem.
Some parents have reported that their children have complained at home that the delivery company is 10 kilometers away from the school, and the lunch they usually eat is cold.
A few other students said that they had eaten foreign objects such as screws and bugs at lunch, which was very disgusting.
But these "early warnings" have not been taken seriously by the school, until now things are big.
After the fact that the nutritious meal became a "problem meal" was exposed, the Zhihong Hengda Trading Co., Ltd. that delivered the meal was finally thoroughly investigated.
The results were unbelievable, and the company actually obtained a business license two days after the incident! In other words, for several months of catering to multiple schools, the company operated without a license.
And in November last year, the company was punished twice for violating environmental regulations, and this year it was reported for fraud and caused a lawsuit.
Such a company with "stain" qualifications was able to successfully pass the tender and provide lunch for hundreds of teachers and students.
Questioning this, a person in charge explained that if he is not allowed to accompany meals, "the child will not be able to eat."
This statement is somewhat true or false, and I think everyone has their own weight in their hearts.
Since the occurrence of the case, 2 people of the company involved have been criminally detained, and other relevant personnel are also cooperating with the investigation.
But as the saying goes, when you find a cockroach in a house, the house may already be full of cockroaches.
As he said, the long-term "chronic disease" of campus food safety is not clear in this case.
02
The "profiteering monopoly" of school canteens
For a long time, the school canteen has been the "golden rice bowl" in the eyes of many businessmen, and the low cost coupled with the stable passenger flow is like a small "monopoly market".
How domineering is this "monopoly market"?
In September this year, two students in Dazhou, Sichuan Province, squatted outside the school and poured half a carton of milk, which attracted the attention of many people.
The parents who were watching on the sidelines came forward to ask and learned that the milk they were drinking was "contraband".
From the beginning of the students' entry into the school, the school ordered no one to bring "snacks" into the school, and those who needed it could buy it on campus.
The two students probably did not expect that a carton of milk prepared by the parents was also counted as a prohibited snack and was blocked by the security guard outside the school gate.
Seeing that milk could not be brought into the school, the two children did not want to waste it, and could only squat at the school gate to drink on the spot.
As soon as this matter came out, public opinion was in an uproar.
The school later responded that the move was for the safety of the students, and the quality of the food brought in from outside the school could not be guaranteed.
This response is obviously difficult to convince the public, as netizens said: "Isn't the school food bought from outside?" ”
If you think about it carefully, the school's strict regulations are afraid that they are driven by interests and engage in "monopoly" in the name of safety.
There is a very popular theory in economics that once the market is monopolized and loses its reasonable competitiveness, it will inevitably bring about vicious consequences.
The long-standing tolerance of the special status of school canteens has led to a significant decline in food safety.
In October 2018, a kindergarten in Wuhu, Jiujiang District, Anhui Province, provided children with rice mold and insects, and the chicken legs prepared for meals stinked;
In March 2019, some parents broke the news that Chengdu Wenjiang No. 7 Middle School Experimental Middle School, which won the "Demonstration Standardized Student Canteen in Sichuan Province", gave the children in the primary school to eat moldy and expired meat.
In December 2020, a middle school student in Guangzhou ate a Band-Aid in a restaurant ribs and flies in a glutinous rice chicken;
In March 2021, white bugs floated in the soup in the canteen of Yancheng Technician College...
But what is even more painful is that these canteens, which have repeated problems, have not been severely punished for student complaints, and most of them have gone through the process of apologizing.
In September this year, at the Oriental Pyramid School in Bazhou City, Hebei Province, some students developed vomiting symptoms after meals, more than 100 students were taken to the hospital, and some people were diagnosed with acute glomerulonephritis on the spot.
After the incident, the school immediately "cooperated with the investigation" and conducted a quality inspection of some of the food in the canteen on the same day, but the result was that the "bacteria content did not exceed the maximum limit", and the suspicion was directly cleared.
But later, it was revealed that the students who had the accident that day ate the most pig hearts were not sampled and tested.
More than two months later, one parent reported, "It feels like it didn't happen."
The school easily threw the pot, and the parents' doubts were no longer heeded.
However, this pile of campus food safety cases not only involves the health of children in the growth and development stages, but also affects the hidden worries of countless parents.
The truth behind it should not be buried; the voices of students and parents should not be ignored!
03
Campus, not a "no-go zone" for food regulation
Food safety is no small matter, and data show that about one in ten people in the world fall ill with food problems every year, and 125,000 children die from foodborne diseases every year.
In recent years, with the increasing attention to food safety, the relevant departments in China have also issued corresponding regulations.
Food safety, especially campus food safety, has long ceased to be a "regulatory no-go zone" for black men of interests.
The aforementioned student vomiting incident in Fengqiu, Henan, is an example of a heavy-handed regulatory attack.
Immediately after the incident, the public security, food and drug administration, health commission and other departments set up a joint investigation team to investigate and deal with the case quickly and thoroughly.
In fact, as early as 2019, China issued the "Regulations on the Management of School Food Safety and Nutrition and Health", which targeted a number of school food management pain points.
It particularly emphasizes the focus issues such as the general prohibition of setting up commissaries and supermarkets on campus, and the establishment of a meal companion system in schools.
Then again, students on campus, as the main victims in such cases, must not sit idly by.
When we find that the canteen has safety problems, we can take reasonable and legal ways to protect our rights and interests.
According to the provisions of China's Food Safety Law, in this case, we can ask the other party to pay 10 times the price or 3 times the loss of compensation, and if the amount of compensation is less than 1,000 yuan after the increase, it will be compensated according to 1,000 yuan.
So what should I do?
First of all, when eating a foreign body in food, do not immediately dump it because of nausea, but keep the evidence as soon as possible. Evidence includes both witnesses (classmates who eat together, etc.) and physical evidence (meals with foreign bodies).
Next, we can negotiate with the person in charge of the canteen ourselves; if we feel that we are not sure about communicating, we can also find a teacher we trust and ask him to help contact the person in charge for consultation.
If the canteen shows a prevarication or refusal to communicate, we can complain to the school, the Food Safety Authority, etc.
Of course, there is also a quick way to dial 12315 for consumer rights protection.
When you find that there are any safety hazards in the canteen, you don't have to swallow your voice, you must know that every time we make a sound, we not only defend our own rights and interests, but also protect the safety of other students.
Of course, we also know that if we want to eradicate the problem of food safety on campus, we cannot rely only on external supervision.
The philosopher Locke once said that moral activity is governed by both government officials and conscience.
It can be seen that what really determines the direction of things in these cases is the "conscience" of the food provider.
So in the end, I hope that schools and contractors will not only stare at the immediate interests, but can really put the health of students in mind, so that the campus is less contaminated with copper odor!