School children fall ill after mid-day meal in Delhi

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Only packaged food with expiry-date packs should be served in schools to ensure hygiene. There are frequent reports of sub-standard raw-material like rice and pulses with lot of foreign ingredients being used to cook mid-day meal in schools.

CJ: MADHU AGRAWAL

Sat, Nov 28, 2009 17:16:57 IST

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ABOUT 125 school-children fell ill after having a mid-day meal in a school in Trilokpuri (Delhi). Such cases of mid-day meal causing illness are now quite common with frogs, lizards, rats among others, often found in mid-day meals funded by the government as the world’s largest school-lunch programme daily to about 12 crores of school-children, all ostensibly freshly cooked mid-day meal.

Only packaged food (if not biscuits) with expiry-date packs should be served in schools to ensure hygiene. There are frequent reports of sub-standard raw-material like rice and pulses with lot of foreign ingredients being used to cook mid-day meal in schools.

It will also take care of peculiar food-habits of some children. Many are known to avoid onion and garlic. It may be recalled that 30 parliamentarians had recommended packaged biscuits procured from reputed companies recommended by the Mumbai-based Biscuits Manufacturers Welfare Association (BMWA) to replace cooked food in mid-day meal-scheme for school-children. Rather the government can further save money by inspiring big manufacturers of packaged food to partially or fully sponsor the programme and get publicity of their trade-name in return.