26,500 schools failed to get mandatory number of kitchen inspections last year

The Child Nutrition Act requires school kitchens be inspected at least twice a year, but USA Today reports 18,000 schools only had one inspection last year and 8,500 more didn't have any. The latest report is part of the newspaper's ongoing series on school lunch safety. Data from the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows the norovirus, whose transmission is linked to improperly handled food, accounted for one-third of the 23,000 food-borne illnesses reported in schools from 1998-2007, Peter Eisler and Blake Morrison report.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the school lunch program, acknowledges that the two-inspection rule is almost impossible to enforce, USA Today reports. Federal data show that more than half the schools in eight states failed to meet the required two inspections last year. In Maine, fewer than 1 percent of school kitchens were inspected the required two times. Other high-ranking states were Alaska, New Mexico, New York, Colorado, New Hampshire, California, Utah and Massachusetts.

USDA requires only that states report the number of schoolsit inspected, not which specific schools were examined. You can see USA Today's state-by-state breakdown of inspection data here. (Read more)

Last week, USDA provided a sample of school lunches to federal lawmakers and staffers to "show lawmakers the improvements the department has made in the nutritional quality -- and taste -- of the $1.2 billion in school commodity foods and to win support to fund further improvements," Jane Black of The Washington Post reported. (Read more)