Education Minister suspends school meals as more students suffer food poisoning this week
More than 400 students in schools in Cairo, Suez, and Aswan have fallen ill due to food poisoning from government-issued school meals over the course of two days this week, the Associated Press reports. The school meals causing the waves of food poisoning are produced by military-owned company, Al Nasr for Services and Maintenance, and include what one mother describes as “a suspicious-looking piece of cheese with a label that we’ve never seen before.” Tuesday and Wednesday’s cases are the latest in a string of incidents of schoolchildren suffering from food poisoning as a result of the school meals, including last week’s hospitalization of 2,200 students in Sohag. Education Minister Tarek Shawki issued a decision yesterday to indefinitely halt the issuing of school meals across the country, effective starting today, and to form a committee to launch a full investigation, Al Masry Al Youm reports. Already on the table: Plenty of new red tape on meal inspection and procedures for storing and distributing the meals.