firmly in place has been confirmed through an abundance of historical evidence.
How to Make School Meals Safe? [13]
The recent food poisoning outbreak at a local school has forced us to ponder over several issues. It was very shocking because the nation's largest catering company was involved and their response was extremely inadequate.
One of the most important lessons we know is that we should promptly let other people know when there's an outbreak of a problem. So, it's hard to believe that the nation's largest catering company attempted to ignore this lesson. If they had not tried to conceal the food poisoning but rather looked for effective measures, they would have been able to minimize the accident as well as their corporate and social losses.
Even a perfect system cannot avoid an accident. This is the reason why people pay attention to the manner in which a government or a company deals with a problem. Companies which voluntarily recall their defective products do not sustain significant losses to their reputations or profits.
Yet, we should avoid overreaction to this matter. Though the path of food poisoning outbreak hasn't been fully identified, it's clear that poor quality control resulted in this problem. Typically, such a problem belongs to companies dependent on outside ordering and it can be solved satisfactorily though not easily.
Therefore, those arguing that a complete change must occur to improve the school meal system are overreacting. The school meal system has evolved and entrusting catering companies with supplying meals is the latest outcome of the development. The economics of scale naturally also applies to school meals. It would be unwise to adopt an outdated system that was once discarded in the past.
Some yearn for lunchboxes packed by Mom. Though mothers in the affected school must do so for the time being, we must remember that the system evolved as a response to students who couldn't rely on having lunchboxes prepared for them. So yearning for lunchboxes could be considered archaic and bringing it back would be a regression to a less developed condition because we forgot our past problems with that system. I still remember mothers who sighed in relief when they were freed from the burden of packing lunchboxes everyday.
Cafeterias operated directly by schools is the most popular solution presented and lots of school have adopted this system. Carefully examined, however, it is primitive. Since the economics of scale is applied to school meals, direct operation of cafeterias by individual schools means regression.
Third, we should restrain the impulse to strengthen restrictions on catering companies. Though complete removal of regulation is impossible, we must remember that quality is enhanced by competition among suppliers. In the market where customers' options are restricted, we should let school meal suppliers compete to improve the quality of the meals.
Finally, technology development will continue to influence the market. The current school meal system is the result of combined technologies. Naturally, the development of technology will accelerate the evolution of the school meal system. And we should not disturb the process.
In this regard, the supply of school meals should be considered in a broader context, namely the transfer of household chores to the outside. In these modern days, most household affairs have moved to the outside except meals, but the thriving dining industry and 'prepared meals' demonstrate that this final part of household chores is also moving out of the home.
Human societies are experiencing transitional stages for meal preparation through experimentation. Of course, experiments include some errors and failure. So we should avoid overreacting to a single accident.
Bok, Kohill (Novelist)
On the article, I sincerely hope this isn’t the position of the CFE.
