Bihar school meal poisoning incident

On 16 July 2013, 23-27 students died, and dozens more fell ill at a primary school in the village of Gandaman in the Saran district of the Indian state of Bihar after eating a Midday Meal contaminated with pesticide.

[9] According to Mashrakh residents, students have suffered from food poisoning after eating school lunches on multiple occasions.

[7] The nonprofit Hare Krishna Food for Life describes the meal programmes in Bihar and neighbouring Uttar Pradesh as "the worst in India."

[12] On 16 July 2013, children aged between four and twelve years at the Dharmashati Mata primary school complained that their lunch, served as a part of the Midday Meal Scheme, tasted odd.

[9][10] The cook, who was also hospitalized by the poisoning, later told reporters that it looked like there was "an accumulation of residual waste at the bottom [of the oil jar]".

[9] Thirty minutes after eating the meal, the children complained of stomach pain and soon after were taken ill with vomiting and diarrhoea.

[7] Initial indications were that the food was contaminated by an organophosphate, a class of chemicals commonly found in insecticides, pesticides and herbicides.

"[9] Dr Amar Kant Jha, superintendent of PMCH in Patna, said that the survivors were emitting toxic vapours, which led his team to suspect almost immediately that they had been poisoned with an organophosphate.

[4] According to state officials, the school's headmistress had bought the cooking oil used in the food from a grocery store owned by her husband.

[1] On 20 July police said that a forensic report confirmed the cooking oil contained "very toxic" levels of monocrotophos, an agricultural pesticide.

[1][2][4][10] Bihar State Education Minister Shahi commented that many people involved in the program were looking for easy money and that "it is just not possible to taste meals in all the 73,000 schools before children eat the food.

It also ordered that the raw grain samples would be kept for three months at Godowns from where items for Midday Meal are supplied.