Read the text below to answer questions 11–12.
Quality of School Lunches Questioned
The meat being provided to our nation’s students in their
lunches may not meet requirements by the fast–food industry,
according to a recent investigation.
Those pangs of guilt when biting into a fast–food
hamburger are one thing, but who would imagine that burger
could be made with higher–quality meat than what our students
are getting in school?
A recent USA Today investigation found that the nation’s
largest fast–food chains have higher quality and safety standards
for the meat they use than what the U.S. Department of
Agriculture has for the meat used for the National School Lunch
Program, which is served to 31 million students a day.
While the USDA rules for meat sent to schools maintain
government safety standards, the government rules have fallen
behind the stricter regulations of fast–food chains and other large
retailers. Fast–food chains test their meat five to ten times more
often than the USDA for bacteria and would reject meat that the
USDA deems safe for consumption.
The standards for meat sent to schools and retailers are so
disparate that ground beef from a plant with a salmonella
outbreak this past August was recalled by retailers, but ground
beef from the same plant produced during that outbreak was still
shipped to schools.
In addition to meat quality issues, school cafeterias are not
being inspected as rigorously required by the Child Nutrition Act.
USA Today found that 8,500 schools across the country did not
have their kitchens inspected at all in 2008, and another 18,000
schools did not complete the two required yearly inspections.
The USDA is responsible for inspecting every school
cafeteria twice a year, but the requirement is difficult to enforce.
For starters, the USDA requires that states simply provide the
number of schools that have been inspected, but don’t keep
record of school names. Also, these cafeteria inspections are
not free and the money is not automatically provided to meet the
mandate. With resources for schools scares across the country,
cafeteria needs are not often a top priority.
These quality control problems for school lunches are not
going unnoticed by NEA (National Education Association)
members. Education support professionals and educators know
the important role nutritious school lunches play in student
achievement. “While the lunches may, according to standards,
be a balanced lunch, it leaves a lot to be desired as far as the
standard applied to the contents of a school lunch”, said Bob
Munoz, a Nevada educator.
Quality of School Lunches Questioned. Available in: http://www.nea.org
According to the text, analyze the sentences below, write T
for true or F for false and choose the alternative that
presents the right sequence.
( ) The text reflects the obesity issue due to the careless
inspection of school food.
( ) Though the U.S. Department of Agriculture presents
deficiencies in the overhaul of meat’s quality, it
detected ground beef from a plant with a salmonella
outbreak and, in time, it precluded the shipping of the
product to schools.
( ) The NEA is one of the institutes in charge to
supervise the procedures of food maintenance
adopted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
