Assessment of Effectiveness of Inspections and Preventive Measures in Organizing School Meals

Introduction: Given the change in the structure of inspections and the priorities of preventive measures aimed at reducing children’s health risks, it is important to assess their effectiveness in organizing school meals.

Objective: To assess the effectiveness of supervisory and preventive measures in organizing feeding in schools of the Sverdlovsk Region.

Materials and methods: We have analyzed data on inspections, preventive visits, and laboratory tests provided by the Sverdlovsk Regional Rospotrebnadzor Office for 72 schools and the results of sanitary and epidemiological surveys (audits) for two schools and four food service operators for the years 2021 to 2024. In addition, we conducted a questionnaire-based survey of 98 school kitchen managers.

Results: Inspections revealed repeated violations pertaining to the procedures posing potential physical, chemical, and microbiological risks. Following preventive visits of supervisory bodies and subsequent inspections, an average of six new violations per school was registered. Repeated inspections found old and/or new violations in the kitchens of other schools run by the same food service operator. Sanitary and epidemiological surveys showed a 3.2 % increase in the level of regulatory compliance of the kitchens. All measures taken demonstrated an average of 1 % increase in the number of abnormal results of testing food samples for microbiological quality and nutritional value.

Conclusions: Positive dynamics is usually observed after supervisory and preventive measures as shown by a decrease in the number of violations of mandatory legal requirements. However, their repetition is noted, which emphasizes poor efficiency, the cause of which can be the lack of training, personnel, information interaction and coordination of actions of the food operator with executive chefs. The indices related to personnel training, improvement of skills and competence are proposed to be included in the set of indicators of effectiveness of regulatory compliance within the system of children’s health risk management in school feeding.

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