Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Teacher! There's a bug in my soup!

Guess who came to lunch today at some Omaha-area elementary schools.

Er . . . make that what.

The Omaha World-Herald reports that the unplanned-upon addition to kids' daily dietary requirements really bugged the lunch ladies.
A surprise ingredient in the soup caused a buzz Wednesday in one metro Omaha school district.
Bugs were discovered in some batches of soup delivered to the lunchrooms at nine Papillion-La Vista elementary schools and St. Columbkille Catholic School.
District spokeswoman Annette Eyman said possibly up to 150 students ate the soup before school officials discovered the contamination and recalled the soup.
The soup was prepared at Papillion-La Vista South High School. Food service workers found bugs in a pot of soup there before it was served to any students, Eyman said.
The bugs were discovered during lunch at Carriage Hill, Patriot and Golden Hills Elementary Schools, she said. No bugs were seen in the soup at the other seven schools, but it was removed anyway.
Officials took samples of the bug to the Douglas-Sarpy Cooperative Extension Service for identification.
It was identified as a sawtoothed grain beetle, she said. “They’re very common, and they don’t carry any diseases,” she said. “They’re not harmful if they’re consumed.”
ASKED FOR COMMENT on whether feeding beetles to kids was an appropriate function of local governments, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney saw the incident as yet another spasm of bitching and moaning by the "47 percent." 

"Listen, let me be clear," Romney said, clearly agitated by the query. "If you're going to be dependent on government and expect that taxpayers, the 'makers' of our society, have a responsibility to feed you at school every day, you can't be that gosh-darned picky about how you get your protein."

One 7-year-old boy at a Papillion-La Vista grammar school, was sanguine about the lunch controversy and the ensuing political scuffle upon hearing of Romney's comments.

"I like bugs," he said.

NEW AT 6 on your First Eyewitness Action News station, Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle eats some maggoty gruel, vows to "work the process" of keeping his lunch down.

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