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Lake County parents claim children served moldy food at school

LAKE COUNTY, Fla. — Outraged parents in Lake County say their children are being served moldy food at school.

The parents organized a Facebook page to speak out about the problem.

They claim their children sent them pictures showing moldy bread and have brought home rotten fruit.

The school district said kitchens are inspected daily.

“She would come home with rotten grapes. She would text me pictures,” said parent Wendy Almanza. “I wanted to throw up. I wouldn’t eat it. I wouldn’t feed it to my dog if I had one. It just grossed me out.”

Almanza now only sends her children to school with packed lunches.

School district officials said they’ve seen the posted pictures, but said there is no way to know for sure where the pictures were taken or when.

“We serve 30,000 meals a day, to students and to guests, and to employees, and overall we get very, very few complaints,” said Sherri Owens of  Lake County public Schools.

She explained the measures that are taken to ensure students get the very best.

“All of our kitchen managers are required to complete a course in food sanitation, we are inspected by various entities, we were inspected by the Health Department of out kitchens three times a year,” she said. “We’re inspected by the Department of Agriculture. Our food services supervisor is inspecting five different kitchens a week, and we have food technicians who are out at multiple kitchens per day.”

She added that the district is one of only a few in the state to receive an award for serving healthy meals.

She said food service teams have been reminded of the policies and parents’ concerns have been addressed.