Kids can be picky eaters, but select students at Hawkins County schools in Tennessee have a right to complain after being served pork dating back to 2009.
Last week, a cafeteria worker in the school district took a picture of the meat, which had been frozen in 2009 and thawed out recently to cook for lunch, to the father of a Hawkins County school student, according to local NBC affiliate WBIR. As any parent in the situation would do, the man alerted the school district.
The photo was taken at Joseph Rogers Primary School but not served there because the staff decided it would be a bad idea. However, at Cherokee Comprehensive High School the meat was covered in gravy to "give it a smell and give it a better taste" after the decision was made to let students consume the meat.
"These high-schoolers - they understand if they see something they are not going to like they don't eat it. But when you get to these kindergartners, first- and second-graders, do they really know if the meat is bad or not?" Hawkins County Commissioner Michael Herrell said.
Director of Schools Steve Starnes said the meat was allowed to stay stored at the schools because it recently passed the district's food inspection tests.
"There were some meats with dates of 2009, 10, 11 in the freezer. Our child nutrition supervisor had the cafeteria managers look at the meat, do the tests, and see if it was OK. The decision was made to serve it," he said.
To make sure this doesn't happen again, the district is getting rid of all expired meat and enforcing USDA Guidelines on how food that will be served in school is handled.
"As material comes in we will be serving it in that time period and we will have a strict adherence to all USDA guidelines, meaning 12 months on meat," Director of Schools Steve Starnes said.
No students have come forward and said the six-year-old pork made them sick.
