You always suspected school lunch food could kill. Now there's evidence to back up your worst childhood fears. (OK, not worst. There's still no evidence that an evil clown is hiding under your bed. Thank god.) Professor Doug Powell's Barf Blog quotes a USA Today story that draws attention to the shamefully lax food safety standards of our public school lunch system:

McDonald's, Burger King and Costco, for instance, are far more rigorous in checking for bacteria and dangerous pathogens. They test the ground beef they buy five to 10 times more often than the USDA tests beef made for schools during a typical production day. And the limits Jack in the Box and other big retailers set for certain bacteria in their burgers are up to 10 times more stringent than what the USDA sets for school beef…Mansour Samadpour, a Seattle-based food safety consultant and microbiologist says the AMS approach to sampling "is not robust enough to find anything."

USA Today: Fast Food Standards for Meat Top Those for School Lunches

Image courtesy Flickr user chidorian, via CC