Tragic School Meal Food Poisoning Disaster Reveals Widespread Government Food Safety Issues

Background

A tragedy felt the world over as at least 23 Indian students, all less than twelve years old, died as a result of poor food safety and storage practices.

The Mid-Day Meal Scheme has been long heralded as the largest and most successful program of it’s type in the world, with over 120 million children fed every day, helping to tackle both malnutrition and poor education. The scheme provides a free meal to school children in exchange for their attendance at school. With poverty a widespread problem in India this program has aimed to both improve the health of children and to increase school attendance. India is home to almost one third of all the world’s malnourished children so it is schemes like this that are vital to sustain India’s recent economic growth. Although the Mid-Day Meal scheme has been viewed as, on the whole, a great success it has been undermined by corruption and food safety issues since its implementation in the 1960’s.

This scheme was undermined to a great extent when around 300,000 primary school teachers in the state of Bihar refused to supervise the Mid-Day Meal scheme, stating that “Teachers must be involved only in teaching.” This statement fell on deaf ears when Bihar’s educational minister stated that there simply were not the resources available to outsource this supervision. It is now the case that all teachers have been ordered to taste all school meals themselves to try and ensure some levels of food safety and quality.

As in most states in India, Bihar’s school meals are usually prepared by private contractors. These contractors often cut corners to increase their profit, using substandard ingredients, poor storage methods and in general producing poor quality food. Officials often turn a blind eye to these poor standards and are paid off not to report them.

To tackle these issues the government has attempted to purchase ingredients such as grain directly to limit the amount of control contractors have over the ingredients used, however this grain is often poorly stored and drives up costs as much is lost or goes off.

UN agencies such as The WFP (World Food Program) and The UNICEF (United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund) as well as humanitarian agencies such as Plan International have been aware of these failings for some time. Much effort has been put into improving the standards of food safety and nutrition. These efforts have mainly been in the form of initiatives put in place by organisations such as Plan International. Plan is involved with thousands of schools throughout India, training the women who cook the meals in food safety and both public and personal hygiene. Plan also ensures that there is safe and clean water available to both the cooks and the children for drinking and cleaning along with washing supplies and soap. Finally Plan has set up management committees to ensure that the parents of the children are involved in the Mid-Day Meal program, in an effort to ensure that the children’s safety is paramount.

Despite all of these efforts over the past years and the, on the whole, success of the scheme, in India’s poorest states, such as Bihar, food safety is still a great concern with many reports of the scheme’s failings. In a survey conducted by the IIM (Indian Institute of Management) it was discovered that children in the state of Gujarat had been told to rub the playground soil on the plates and then give them a “quick rinse” to clean the plates after the school lunch. There have also been reports that grain purchased by the government for the Mid-Day Meal scheme was being stored improperly with stones and worms often being found. Food has also been reported contaminated with dead lizards, insects and rats.

Reports of poisoning are not uncommon, yet rarely as severe as this incident. Earlier this year, in the state of Haryana, two children died after eating a meal served under the Mid-Day Meal scheme. During May in the state of Bihar, where this incident occurred, eighteen girls fell ill after consuming a free school meal.

“Accountability and monitoring is weak to none existent” – International Food Policy Researcher Suneetha Kadiyala.

Although poisoning events are not uncommon in the Mid-Day Meal scheme none have ever been as severe as this incident.

The Incident

The incident occurred on the 16th of July 2013 at the Dharmashati Gandaman Primary School, Saran District, Bihar, India. After eating the government provided lunch, part of the Mid-Day Meal Scheme, the children of the school, aged between four and twelve, complained about the taste of the food. Complaints about the quality of the food served as part of the Mid-Day Meal scheme are common due to its, on the whole, poor quality and therefore the headmistress ignored these complaints.

Almost immediately after the meal of rice and potato curry was served the children fell ill, vomiting and convulsing on the floor with stomach cramps. Some of the children died within minuets on the classroom floor, others on the floor of the hospital. Due to the overwhelming number of children poisoned, the school and local medical facility were completely overrun. Some of the sick children were sent home, sixteen children died at the school, and four others were dead on arrival at the local hospital. Official figures state that twenty-three of the forty-eight students that fell ill died as a result of the contaminated food yet the local people contest this figure, stating an additional four children died. The cook, Panna Devi was also hospitalised, yet although she survived she lost two of her three children to the incident.

Initial indications were that the meal had been poisoned with some sort of organophosphate which are often found in agricultural pesticides. This was supported by reports that the survivors were emitting toxic vapours, a textbook sign of organophosphate poisoning. Further investigation uncovered that the cook had informed the headmistress that the cooking oil was discoloured and odd smelling. The cook spoke of “an accumulation of residual waste at the bottom” of the container, yet the headmistress had ignored her concerns as the oil had been purchased at a local shop owned by her husband.

Forensic investigation found that the oil had been contaminated with Monocrotophos, a rare organophosphate used as an agricultural pesticide. This already hazardous substance was found at a staggeringly high concentration, five times more concentrated than the commercially available version which has to be diluted five times with water. The concentrated version is very rarely sold.

“It’s highly poisonous, it’s highly toxic, and, therefore, it has to be diluted when used as commercial pesticides,” – District Magistrate Abhijit Sinha

In 2009 the WHO (World Health Organisation) asked India to ban the use of Monocrotophos such as found here, describing Monocrotophos as “highly hazardous”. The UN FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation) stated that “all waste and contaminated material associated with the chemical should be considered hazardous waste and destroyed in a special high-temperature chemical incinerator facility.”

It has now emerged that the oil, purchased from a local store owned by the headmistress’s husband, had been stored in a container formerly used to store Monocrotophos for use as an agricultural pesticide. The headmistress fled with her husband after the incident but has since been arrested on suspicion of murder and criminal conspiracy.

The Reaction

There has been outrage and demonstrations the world over. Across Bihar, the state in which the incident occurred, many students have boycotted the school meals in the days following the incident. This is likely to be both in protest for their fellow students and in fear that an incident like this could happen again. There have also been several street protests and demonstrations with effigies of the Bihar Chief Minister burned, police vehicles damaged and the Mid-Day Meal scheme scrapped in many areas. The kitchen of the Dharmashati Gandaman Primary School has been completely destroyed.

There have also been some seemingly absurd allegations that the oil was purchased from a member of a rival political party who have called for a general strike in opposition to these aspersions.

Allegations have also emerged that the authorities took over fourteen hours to get all of the sick children to hospitals and that the deaths may have been deliberate, with the Bihar Educational Minister stating that this is “not normal food poisoning”.

In terms of compensation for the families that have lost children to the incident the Bihar government has offered 200,000 INR (£2116) to the families of the dead children.

Conclusion

This truly tragic event highlights the importance of properly training those people involved in food preparation, labelling containers correctly and following guidelines on toxic chemical storage. There are obviously many challenges to ensuring good food safety in poorer areas such as Bihar, one of India’s poorest and most populous states. The Mid-Day Meal scheme is one of the strongest initiatives in tackling both malnutrition and poor education, a tragedy like this could threaten the scheme’s very existent, yet it is important that the scheme is not scraped, but improved. With more funding, stronger guidelines and more responsibility, this scheme could still remain a cornerstone of Indian health and education policy.