April 7, 2006
No Illnesses Connected to Potentially Contaminated Food
The state health department reported Friday that it has retrieved all of the potentially contaminated food that was distributed to school lunch programs across the state earlier this year.
There were no confirmed cases of illness related to the food, which had been stored in a warehouse where the coolant system leaked ammonia gas in late January.
“We’re very grateful that this accident didn’t harm anyone’s health,” said Joan Miles, director of the Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS). “We’ve learned from it and are developing some new protocols that will help to prevent situations like this in the future.”
Miles said she appreciated the cooperation of the Office of Public Instruction in responding to the incident. OPI operates the school lunch program in part with USDA commodity foods. DPHHS administers the commodity food program in Montana and is the primary provider of storage for food used by the school lunch program.
A DPHHS employee first discovered the ammonia leak on Jan. 25 at a leased freezer facility in Butte. Ammonia is commonly used as a coolant in commercial freezers.
The department sent samples of some of the exposed foods to a Food and Drug Administration lab for testing and learned on Feb. 27 that the samples were tainted with ammonia. DPHHS advised schools, through OPI, not to serve any of the exposed products.
“Although the amount of ammonia in the samples was pretty small, we thought it was important to be safe rather than sorry, especially when you’re dealing with the health of children,” Miles said. “There are no official standards for how much ammonia a person can consume without being harmed in some way, and there was no way to figure out how much of the food was contaminated without testing it all. So we decided the best course of action was to retrieve and destroy all of the potentially contaminated food.”
According to OPI, schools have returned 79 percent of the potentially contaminated food. Another 19 percent was served to students, and about 2 percent was discarded by school lunch employees. DPHHS is storing the food in the Butte warehouse pending its appropriate disposal.
As a result of this incident, Miles said, public health and school officials have established new lines of communication and have begun working together on protocols that will help to ensure food safety and clarify responsibilities.
DPHHS is also investigating the use of freezer facilities that use newer and safer coolants.
“School lunches should be safer than ever in the future,” Miles said. “This served as an excellent wakeup call that we needed to improve our food storage protocols, and we’re already making changes that will accomplish just that.”
Page last updated: 06/13/2006
