According to a federal report, authorities often fail to inform schools about recalls of tainted food products, increasing the risk that children will fall victim to food poisoning.

The Government Accountability Office reported this week that the Agriculture Department failed to ensure that schools were informed about any possibly tainted food products that could expose their children to illnesses. Children therefore, continue to be at risk for illnesses from the contaminated foods distributed through federal school lunch and breakfast programs.

According to the GAO audit, the delay was evident this year during the huge peanut butter-salmonellosis epidemic which led to 700 people falling sick. The audit says that the government failed to ensure timely notification about contaminated food products, provided through the federal lunch program.

The safety alerts should have reached schools immediately, allowing them to pull off the dangerous foods and protect children from the possibility of deadly infections. However, in some cases, safety alerts were only received by the school after more than a week. During this time, many of these schools served the tainted food to the children because they were not aware of any contamination. According to the audit, the Food and Nutrition Service, a wing of the Department of Agriculture which is responsible for providing states and schools with commodities for the lunch and breakfast programs, suffers from a lack of proper systems that can immediately notify it when the Food and Drug Administration begins a safety investigation. Often, the Food and Nutrition Service waits until the investigation is completed and a recall is announced, to identify if the tainted product has been sent to schools, and to notify schools to avoid serving the food until the investigation has been completed.

During the peanut butter Salmonellosis scandal, the FDA traced salmonella to a peanut processing plant in Georgia, and announced a recall of a few products made during a specific period. But the Food and Nutrition Services failed to inform schools, believing that no purchases had been made from the Georgia plant during the time period. Its website further mentioned that any possible epidemic would not affect schools, because they had not received tainted products. Six days later, the recall was expanded to include peanut butter made during other time periods. The Food and Nutrition Service then told the schools to throw away the products. As the result of this delay, some students who consumed the peanut butter products in schools suffered from salmonellosis.

School children are at an especially high risk of contracting food poisoning illnesses. Young children who may have weaker immune systems, for instance are at an especially high risk for salmonellosis. California food poisoning lawyers believe that our children’s health and safety should be at the highest priority. The current system seems to place children’s health lower down the list, and that is completely unacceptable. If there is a risk that children can suffer food poisoning, then schools must be notified immediately, so that they can avoid serving children the tainted food.