School lunch program not threatened by mad cow disease, USDA says

By Del Stover

01/20/04 -- The nation's first reported case of mad cow disease has done little to discourage the serving of beef in school cafeterias.

After receiving assurances from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that meat supplied to the school lunch program is safe, school systems from New York City to Seattle continued to serve such traditional lunch fare as chili, lasagna, hamburgers, and tacos.

"We never had any reason to believe our beef was affected," says Houston schools spokesperson Terry Abbott, who says beef stayed on school menus.

In Moses Lake, Wash., where the affected cow was slaughtered, beef also remained on the menu. School officials say they'd heard no community concerns about the safety of school meals.

"You're the first telephone call we've had about it," says school spokesperson P.J. De Benedetti. "We really haven't seen much interest about it."

News of the nation's first case of mad cow disease broke Dec. 23, when the U.S. Agriculture Department (USDA) announced that a Holstein slaughtered in Washington state had tested positive for the disease.

Federal officials recalled 10,000 pounds of meat processed at the same time as the infected animal.

Mad cow disease -- or bovine spongiform encephalopathy -- is caused by a misshapen protein that attacks a cow's central nervous system.

A small number of people worldwide appear to have contracted a similar form of the fatal disease after eating the meat of afflicted animals.

News of the diseased cow broke while most schools were on winter break, giving school officials ample time to determine the potential risk to students.

The Agriculture Department quickly assured school officials that none of the affected beef had entered the national school lunch program, which provides meals to an estimated 28 million schoolchildren. Commercially available beef in the nation's food supply also was declared safe.

Eric Bost, under secretary of the Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services at USDA, wrote a letter to constituents Jan 8 to "emphasize our complete confidence in the safety of beef supplied to schools and other recipient agencies through the USDA commodity program."

"USDA has purchased none of the implicated beef products for distribution through the national school lunch program," Bost says. "USDA has never had contracts with any of the involved plants, and they are not part of the supply chain for USDA purchases."

According to Bost, USDA specifications strictly prohibit meat that is mechanically separated from bone with automatic deboning systems, advanced meat recovery systems, or powered knives for its commodity programs. Such processes increase the likelihood that meat from a diseased cow could be infected.

One of the few school systems to modify its menu was Jefferson County school district, the largest in Colorado. Although school officials left beef on the menu if it was supplied through the school lunch program, they did pull five commercially prepackaged products that contained processed beef or beef byproducts.

According to district spokesperson Rick Kaufman, the school system decided to keep these products in storage until it received written confirmation from suppliers that the products did not use beef from the Moses Lake area.

"It's not that we were so much worried," he says. "We just wanted to allay fears that community members and parents might have."

Although some school systems prepared information to send home to parents or briefed administrators on how to respond to inquiries, most reported little or no community concerns about the safety of school meals.