As part of the government's five-point food safety reform policy, several agencies are planning to launch a joint inspection program of school lunches to improve food sanitation practices and the nutritional quality of the meals, the Executive Yuan said today at a food safety task force meeting.
The program will also encourage schools to use ingredients that bear the CAS (Certified Agricultural Standards), the CAS organic, the GAP (Good Agricultural Products), and TAP (Taiwan/Traceability Agricultural Product) labels, or the Taiwan Agricultural Products Production Traceability QR code.
The Ministry of Education (MOE), Council of Agriculture (COA) and Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) will implement the program in three stages, offering guidance and recommendations to schools before conducting inspections.
The first stage of the program aims to improve schools' knowledge of sanitation measures for food and drink preparation. The MOE will train seed teachers at the central level, and hold seminars regarding on-site inspections at the local level. The training will include sourcing and identifying certified or traceable food ingredients, examining ingredients on delivery, and controlling food sanitation. Improving frontline workers' understanding of healthy ingredients and food sanitation practices will protect the health of the nation's children.
In the second and third stages, the COA and the MOHW will respectively guide local and central agencies in conducting joint on-site inspections of school lunch preparations. The inspections will focus on how schools examine delivered ingredients, records of such examinations, the school's participation in an ingredient registration program, the use of certified and traceable food products, and the school's health and sanitation controls for food preparation sites.
Authorities will begin preliminary inspections during the current school semester to offer guidance and recommendations. The official inspections, to be launched during the 2017 school year, will include spot checks on fresh ingredients, semi-processed foods and processed products.
Promoting certified and traceable ingredients in school lunches is essential for improving student nutrition and food education, and marks the first sweeping reform on ingredient use since school lunches became popular in the 1980s. This reform initiative will not only ensure that students are eating quality, safe and traceable local produce, but also increase Taiwan's food self-sufficiency and promote the food traceability system. These efforts will improve the livelihoods of food producers and ensure food safety for all citizens.