Tomatoes Join the List of School Inedible
Edibles
• District Takes No Chances at Year
End
A salmonella outbreak that has sickened 167
people nationwide has prompted the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified
School District has removed tomatoes from its school
menus. Two cases of the illness have now been confirmed in
California.
The suspect tomatoes, which carry an
unusual serotype of the salmonella bacterium called
salmonella saintpaul, were initially believed to
have originated in Texas and New Mexico. New evidence suggests
that the contaminated produce was grown in Mexico.
Orlando Griego, the director of food
services for the SMMUSD, told the Malibu Surfside News that the
school district had already pulled tomatoes from the
school menu, even though all 15 schools are supplied with
locally grown vegetables through a program called Farm to
School, and that California-grown tomatoes have been cleared by
the FDA.
Griego said that despite its local produce
program, the district wasn’t taking any chances.
“There’s less than two weeks left in the school
year,” he said. “We can manage without
tomatoes.” The district’s well-stocked salad bars
offer plenty of other options, he said.
In fact, the SMMUSD spends approximately
$100,000 a year on its Farm to School program, which provides
the school district with produce grown by some 20 local
farmers.
The nationally recognized Farm program,
which just celebrated its 10-year anniversary, is the
brainchild of Robert Gottlieb, a professor at
Occidental College’s Urban and
Environmental Policy Institute and a
McKinley Elementary School parent.
Begun in 1998 at McKinley Elementary
School, by 2001 the program had spread to all 15 schools in the
district. Farm to School makes a salad bar of fresh locally
grown produce available to students and staff daily, along with
nutritional education, instruction on salad bar etiquette,
and school farms.
Today the program has become a national
effort to connect schools with local farms and produce.
According to local farm advocates, the current salmonella
outbreak, and other recent food scares that have led the U.S.
Academy of Sciences this week to announce that vegetables and
fruits are the “leading vehicles” of food-borne
illness in the United States, highlights the need for locally
grown produce, and local accountability, instead of reliance on
imported produce that may not meet local criteria for health
and safety.
