MANHATTAN — City schools have pulled chicken tenders off the menu after bones were found inside the processed lunch meat, according to City Limits.
After receiving seven complaints from people who found bones or blue plastic in the chicken tenders earlier this school year, the Department of Education initially ordered the lunch items destroyed.
It reversed its decision after the meat was X-rayed and gave the OK for it to be re-sent to schools.
But bones were again found in that same batch of chicken tenders by staff at one Manhattan school, sources told City Limits.
After the publication inquired about the incident, SchoolFoods ordered the item be pulled, the report said.
DOE officials would only confirm that the chicken tenders were originally placed on hold on Sept. 29 and will remain off the menu temporarily, "out of an abundance of caution,” until concerns have been addressed.
Officials quickly took action and are investigating, according to the DOE.
This comes on the heels of the DOE pulling a type of pizza slice from its menu in September following inquiries from City Limits about a complaint of suspected mold.
The pizza had been taken out of schools last spring because of similar complaints but returned this year — only to continue having problems.
The New York City school system, which spends about half a billion dollars on its SchoolFood division, is the second largest purchaser of food in the country, behind the U.S. military, officials say.
The DOE has been making efforts to improve the quality of the food — by eliminating antibiotics from its chicken products, for instance.
But the school system isn’t doing enough to ensure quality control, experts worry.
“Schools would be so much better off buying real food — even USDA commodities — and doing their own cooking than buying the cheapest possible processed products for which the only concern is cost,” said Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University and the author of several prize-winning books including "Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety."
“The New York City school food system is huge, but as long as it prioritizes cost over feeding kids healthfully, these kinds of things will happen. School food needs to be a much higher priority than it now is."
Still, there are many limitations on school food, whether it's the capacity of cafeterias to cook real food or the fact that all protein served at city schools is pre-cooked to cut down on food-borne illnesses.
Representatives from the Somma Food Group, which makes the chicken tenders, were not immediately available.
