On Food Poisoning at Schools

NST on Wednesday 23 April reported another incident of food poisoning at Sekolah Kebangsaan Taman Dato Harun 1, PJ involving 120 pupils. The culprit? Food from the canteen.

I think most of us already felt sick and annoyed to hear about food poisoning cases at schools for the past few months. It has been accepted as normal incidence for canteen operator and school administrators. The worse part is, majority of the cases were caused by food prepared on site. What is wrong with this? Are food safety and hygiene is not being practiced at all in the schools kitchen? Or to be more realistic, do the operators know, understand and practice food safety and personal hygiene while handling food for the kids? Knowing and attending compulsory courses conducted by local councils seems to be inadequate for them. Masuk telinga kanan, keluar telinga kiri. Pick one school of your choice, ask one of the canteen operators, have they heard about E. Coli, Salmonella, taun etc2? Most of the time you'll get a blank face as if you are speaking German.

On another note, should we revisit the local council roles in ensuring that these operators do have basic knowledge of the cause of food poisoning and ways to prevent it from happening? All food handlers must be vaccinated for typhoid, but some of these operators were not even vaccinated. Don't believe me? Ask them to show the proof of vaccination. Not all of the workers has been vaccinated. Some local council also make it compulsory for business involving food served to the public to attend short courses on food safety and hygiene. But...if they really attend those courses, why we are still seeing food poisoning cases one after another? It is just a BASIC training, but it is enough for TOM, DICK and HARRY to understand and practice what they've learned from the course. They don't need to understand and know that E.Coli is a gram negative, anaerobic bacteria. But yet they failed to understand the importance of food safety and hygiene!! Or....do local council really do their job in enforcing, do random checking on all food joints for signs of failure to comply to food safety practice? I rarely see them doing health safety inspections nowadays. You'll see more of them giving fines to traffic offenders than fines to food joints. Of course la...kedai mamak or restaurants or even canteen can give them free meals to avoid any actions from them, but we, traffic user can't give them anything. Just headache to them. Is this true? Come to your own conclusion...

What if your kid or even you yourself being struck by food poisoning due to others negligence?
I'll be pissed. You'll miss your work, your kid will miss his/her school, worst is he/she might be hospitalised for severe fluid loss from diarrhoea and vomiting with unbearable stomach pain, and worst will be death. Do you want this to happen again? Not me.

From now on, everybody should take the responsibility, big responsibility. Local council, act fast, do frequent health safety inspection, enforce on strict procedures for food outlet to get their licenses by making compulsory for them to attend short courses on food safety. Canteen operators, please comply to the food safety and hygiene. Take it lightly and I hope we will enact new acts to punish these errant food handlers/canteen operators. Punishment should be hard enough to give them a lesson. Teachers/school administration...take this issue seriously. Punish, suspend, or even terminate those canteen operators who disregard the public safety. This is not the time anymore for heart-to-heart discussion with these canteen operators. We mean business, and wrongdoing must be punished!