Food and drug safety ministry plans school food inspections

The food and drug safety ministry said it will inspect more than 5,000 school catering facilities from Aug. 24 to Sept. 11 as the autumn term begins, working with education offices and local governments. The sites include catering facilities at kindergartens, primary, middle and high schools and universities, as well as ingredient suppliers.

The checks will also cover more than 28,000 food businesses near schools, including unmanned stores, food-service establishments and school shops. The checks will focus on expired products and whether school shops sell high-calorie, low-nutrition foods. At catering facilities, they will also check the hygienic handling of food and equipment, the storage of retained meal samples, and compliance with frozen and refrigerated food-storage standards.

The ministry will collect prepared foods at catering sites to test for food-poisoning bacteria and 340 agricultural-product samples for pesticide residues, heavy metals and mycotoxins. The samples will include rice, onions and other produce widely used in group meals or found noncompliant during the past three years.

The ministry will also train food-service workers on handwashing, ingredient management, including for eggs, and cooking precautions. It urged catering facilities to be cleaned and disinfected before use, and stored ingredients to be checked in advance for use-by dates.