National School Lunch Act

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The Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act is a United States federal law signed by President Harry S Truman in 1946. The act created a program to provide low cost or free school lunch meals to qualified students through subsidies to schools.

1 Establishment of the program
2 Food Safety
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Establishment of the program

Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act (79 P.L. 396, 60 Stat. 230) Above is the public law number and US statute for the original text.

The main driving force to the establishment of the program was not what many would think (only health and nutrition issues), but also national security. The driving force behind the program was actually General George C. Marshall, then a Secretary on the cabinet in the Truman's Government.

During the WWII, the United States facing the needs for an expanding military to cope with war on two fronts. However many of the conscripts, especially those from working class families had had a hard life in the great depression of the 1930s and had adverse effects on their health. This led to an increasing number of conscripts not meeting basic health requirements for basic military services. This caused alarm at the Department of Defense as it adversely affected the ability to meet the US troop requirements.

As soon as the WWII was finished, the US was already preparing for the next fight with Communism led by the Soviet Union. It is with this in mind, with planners preparing for the next wave of conscriptions, that the US launched the National School Lunch Act as a means to boost overall health and nutrition for its population.

[edit] Food Safety

Driven to increase the quality of food in the nation's school lunch program (NSLP), the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) undertook an ambitious agenda a few years ago to provide schools with a consistent supply of safe and low fat ground beef.

Beginning in 2003, AMS established a statistically based vendor certification and supply chain quality management program for the purchase of ground beef for NSLP under the Technical Requirements Schedule - GB-2006 (current version). The program has enjoyed considerable success in reducing pathogen levels and controlling fat content in ground beef that is provided to school children.

Under the program, Meat Grading and Certification (MGC) Branch agents enforce continuous auditing and in-plant monitoring as long as the contractor is in the program. Microbial and fat SPC charts and graphs for microbial levels and fat content are monitored for process assessment purposes on a daily basis.[1]

The NSLP purchasing specification represents one of the most carefully thought out and best implemented supply chain safety and quality management systems in the food industry. It appears to be developing influence within the industry.[2]

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