60 students fell ill after consuming noon meal at school in Salem
Food Safety Officers are planning to step up surveillance of noon meal cooking centres and Anganwadi centres run in the district by the Integrated Child Development Service Centres (ICDS).
This followed the incident at Salem where 60students of the Government High School at Ulipuram in Attur taluk fell ill and were hospitalised after they consumed the noon meal at the school on Wednesday.
Official sources told The Hindu here on Thursday that the inspections will be taken up to ascertain the efficacy of a training programmetaken up last year for the staff of Anganwadi centres and noon meal cooking centres in Government schools.
The mandatory training was introduced after an incident of food poisoning in a Government school in Bihar claimed more than 20 lives. Following this, the Tamil Nadu Food Safety Commissioner Kumar Jayanth had issued a circular on July 19, 2013, directing Designated Officers of Food Safety Wing to take up inspections at Anganwadi centres and conduct training programmes.
Of the total 6,000-odd cooking staff in the district, sources said that training was completed for nearly 4,500. The training for the rest would be stepped up now. Further, nearly 20 per cent of all noon meal cooking centres and Anganwadi centres in the district were inspected last year, a food safety official said.
A major issue that came up during inspections was that a few of the cooks were keeping samples of the food for one day. This was made mandatory and a sample was needed to establish the reason behind food poisoning. This was emphasised during the training programme.
The cooking staff were also taught how to properly store the raw materials, wash hands before serving food and ensure hygienic cooking conditions, besides spotting adulteration in the raw materials. Sensitisation programmes were also held for the Block Development Officers and child development project officers, who ran the Anganwadi centres.
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