The Department of Basic Education is working to prevent the infiltration of industrial and agricultural pesticides into schools as part of a wider multidisciplinary effort to address recent deaths of school-age children from foodborne illness.

Speaking at a media briefing on Thursday, Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube emphasized the department’s role in protecting students, especially as many of the recent deaths have involved school-aged children.

“We have done a lot of inspections regarding the school feeding program to find out if the school feeding program has been compromised. Our findings indicate that the majority of these deaths are not linked to the school feeding program,” said Gwarube.

Gwarube cited an incident two weeks ago, where several children fell ill after consuming food but confirmed it was not related to foodborne illness or pesticide poisoning.

The minister highlighted the danger of children bringing snacks to school, which are often shared between students.

“These pesticides, which are strictly for industrial and agricultural use, have no place on school premises, including those that store food for the school feeding program,” she said.

In response, the department is implementing stricter guidelines to protect food in schools from contamination. These include:

• Strengthening measures to secure the school nutrition program, which feeds 9.7 million students daily.
• Ensure that food handlers and distributors follow strict hygiene protocols.
• Issue comprehensive guidance to provinces and schools on food storage and handling.

“Our… priority is to make sure that that school nutrition program, which feeds 9.7 million students every day, is protected from being compromised because we want to make sure that those who are the food handlers and those who are the distributors of the program, stay to very strict guidelines so that we can ensure that we can still provide and provide meals to students every day.

“We are confident that we have provided adequate guidance to provinces and schools. We hope that we can continue to insulate school nutrition programs from further contamination. And of course, we are working with other ministers to ensure that we are doing our part in what we can do at the school level”, said Gwarube – SAnews.gov.za