LANSING — About 80 high-security prisoners at Baraga Correctional Facility in the western Upper Peninsula refused to eat lunch and dinner this week in a protest over prison food, a Corrections Department spokesman confirmed.

The protest began at lunchtime on Tuesday and continued through Wednesday but appeared to taper off on Thursday, after meetings with officials from the prison and the department's food contractor, Florida-based Trinity Services Group, department spokesman Chris Gautz said.

Gautz couldn't provide any specifics about the prisoners' complaints, but he said they related to both the quantity and the quality of the food.

Baraga houses about 850 prisoners, of which about 350 are high-security Level 5 prisoners.

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Food was among the complaints at Kinross Correctional Facility in the U.P. on Sept. 10, when low-security inmates smashed windows, set small fires and broke fixtures after about 400 inmates there participated in a peaceful march.

Food problems and complaints have been a major issue in the state corrections system since the department replaced about 370 state kitchen workers and privatized prison food services in December of 2013. Complaints and incidents, such as cases of food workers smuggling drugs into prison, have subsided but not ceased since Trinity replaced Aramark Correctional Services of Philadelphia in September 2015.

Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @paulegan4.