[Juneau, Superintendent Bridget] Weiss said the milk and the floor sealant, which is also a milky, white substance, both come in large plastic bags that are stored inside cardboard boxes. For the milk, the pouch is removed from the box and placed inside the dispenser to serve with meals instead of in cartons.
Both the milk and sealant were stored at a district commodity storage site off campus. Weiss said that somehow, boxes with sealant in large pouches were “stored or moved on the same pallet as large pouches of milk that were also in cardboard boxes. We don’t know how that happened, but they were all put on the same pallet... That pallet was delivered, and the assumption was that it was milk because that’s what we thought was being delivered.”
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55 comments:
presumedly, one is refrigerated and one is not?
Good to read that the police are investigating not to pin blame but to figure out what happened so it cannot ever happen again.
Weiss said that somehow, boxes with sealant in large pouches were “stored or moved on the same pallet as large pouches of milk that were also in cardboard boxes. We don’t know how that happened...
INCONCEIVABLE!
Sorry, no video.
You knew someone was going to post this. You're welcome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPO8PqHGWFU
This is why you always check the expiration date. I know that sounds like a joke, but a simple check which people should be doing anyways, would likely have caught this. Floor sealant shelf life is measured in years, milk shelf life is measured in weeks.
I don't think cafeteria workers can be expected to anticipate accidental industrial chemicals, but they don't get to claim due diligence if they aren't checking for expired milk.
Admittedly I might be slightly bitter over how many times my high school cafeteria sold out of date milk-in-a-bag.
Did the kids love like their parents loved school paste?
The widespread public (government) school system in the US has generally abandoned the mission of educating children, leaving that function to private schools, public CHARTER schools, and homeschools. The public schools now see their core mission as providing day-care and meals to the children of laborers.
This Alaska fiasco took place at exactly such a day-care/meal facility and program. The education mission (such as it may remain) is paused for the traditional summer teachers' vacation. But the custody and feeding mission goes on.
A core MISSION is not the same as a core COMPETENCY, obviously.
Cartoon caption:
This new Biden formula from China taste kinda funny to you?
the other kid responds: What?
We watch Fox News at my house.
Raw egg yolks would probably make a great floor sealant.
Which Republican has been blamed for this? Sarah Palin?
Nothing works like it used to, from the upper levels on down, and from the lower levels on up. In pretty much every company or business. Certainly in our schools, media, and government. In this case, if a warehouse receiving person pulled and placed the milk and sealant on the same pallet to deliver to the schools, that's a problem. You don't ship edibles and poisonous chemicals together. Even more of a problem is no one properly checking in the goods at the school. Did no one read the labels on the boxes/cases to see what they were receiving and match it up with a Bill of Lading, or invoice, or packing slip? Do the people receiving know how to read?
Little things add up. Go into any business today and you'll see a shortage of help. And those who are there are a mix of quality, productive (typically longer term) employees and newer, I-don't-give-a-shit-about-this-or-any-damned-job employees. Quality, standards, professionalism, safety all start to go down. In some instances, they just tank and you can see it when you're walking through the place.
I see it all around me. And not just in the small businesses in my home town. I see it all around as I travel the country. It started to go to crap well before covid. But the shutdown enhanced and increased the worst of the attitudes and poor standards. Its the new standard now. And of course, every time our government opens their mouths, they make it worse.
Aseptic processed milk does not need to be refrigerated until after opening the pouch. Shelf life seems to be around 6 months unrefigerated from what I have read.
I blame Sarah Palin. I have no idea how she did it but she is so evil that she must be responsible for this evil act.
Burn the witch!
Happy to see that she won her election the other day. She will be a welcome voice of sanity in Congress. PEDJT is now a
On the mixup, I don't understand how it could happen unless on purpose. As someone noted, milk is refrigerated. Milk spouts are pretty specific. Never heard of a sealer or anything else that came in a similar bag.
I'd like to see pictures. None provided in the article
John LGBTQ Henry
I think they drank liquid wax, not "floor sealant." I had to apply that stuff to floors when I was in the army. It replaced actual paste wax because that stuff is a fire hazard.
Weiss said the milk and the floor sealant, which is also a milky, white substance, both come in large plastic bags that are stored inside cardboard boxes.
Milk in bags!?
Blame Canada.
In my former life I sold floor stripper, sealant, and wax. The 5 gallon containers are what's called bag-in-a-box and to be dispensed out of the box. The bag is not be removed and then dispensed. Praise the Lord it wasn't floor stripper.
That’s one way, a bad one, to solve the formula shortage. I’m glad we have FDA labels to help nutrition experts plan meals for children.
reading labels is out? Must be a public school.
> It started to go to crap well before covid.
I saw the early signs and predicted it about thirty years ago. Civilization does not flourish when few are educated or trained. Things fall apart.
You don't ship edibles and poisonous chemicals together.
I worked at a dollar stores warehouse( family dollar, dollar tree and dollar general )We sorted the items onto u-boats and wrapped the loaded u-boat with a thin plastic for final shipping. The point was not to mix edibles with non edibles. To make it easier the box colors where slightly different, in case you didn’t care to read labels. After awhile you could tell what was what just looking at the box.
Ps there was theft going on despite the cameras.
I am highly skeptical that this was NOT intentional.
I have hooked up the bags in the shake machine at McDonalds in my youth. There was a purpose fit opening in the bag to exactly fit the spout insert. A full bag exactly fit inside the compartment in the machine.
Forty years later I work on slightly more complicated systems. If something doesn't fit properly, you almost certainly have the wrong piece of equipment.
Yes, I have seen floor sealant that looks like a milky fluid. However, I suspect there is a huge difference in the bags.
For this to NOT be intentional, this would also have to be the first time for that employee to install the milk bags.
In the 90's there were these embarrassingly bad posters to convince kids that milk in a bag was cooler than milk in a carton.
Did the product smell like milk or like industrial poison? Did kids taste a drop and reject it, or did some guzzle it down and are now in an ICU?
And, yes, "Idiocracy" was not supposed to be a how-to show.
This is very insensitive to the tributoxyethyl phosphate intolerant students in the school.
"Milk in bags!?"
First time I saw t was at my private Catholic dorm in college. The food was almost inedible, but the bagged milk, regular and chocolate, was ice cold and delicious. I survived on it and bread and butter.
don't they come marked with content identity?
This is a violation of common sense, not to mention dozens of state and federal laws and regulations.
60 years ago Dad taught us to never store poisons, and food in the same building. NEVER
Feeding mineral and root worm insecticide(Furadan) look alike, Mineraal of course is ground minerals. Furadan was insecticide sprayed on clay granulars.
I see these stories weekly. We have become a culture of idiots that obsess about pronouns, but are too stupid to separate food and poison. I wish they would take a quick count of how many degreed people work in that building. I'm betting at least one Phd.
Owen said...
Did the product smell like milk or like industrial poison? Did kids taste a drop and reject it, or did some guzzle it down and are now in an ICU?
Among the many questions (well-described by Temujin), I wondered this myself. Presumably, they got a mouthful, spit it out, and ran to get a glass of water to rinse. I doubt anyone actually swallowed more than a tiny amount. Some, however, may have needed to have their stomachs pumped.
"Milk in bags!?"
Dont know your age, but when I was in the 3rd grade, so early 60's. we did a field trip to a Dairy (whole milk processor). They had a line filling bags with milk. For instutions, like hospitals, and schools
what y'all sound like :
Eddie Willers walking through New York on his way to see Dagny Taggart to tell about supply-chain shortfall
Canada has a lot to answer for but bulk milk in bags isn't one of them.
Fod service milk has come in bags since at least the early 50s. I'm pretty sure Americans invented it.
Consumer size milk in bags was invented in the US by dupont in the 70s to compete with tetrapak and international paper.
Americans took one look and said "yeah, no" so they sold it in Canada.
John LGBTQ Henry
"somehow" hmmm
Deplorable
Republican Budget cuts to schools caused this.
We obviously need to give schools more money.
You don't ship edibles and poisonous chemicals together
This is a major reason why I always go to the self-checkout at the grocery. So I can bag myself. Because I've been annoyed more than once when a bagger has put drain cleaner and produce in the same bag. Because I don't like poison with my food.
I guess the tiny cartons we enjoyed as kids weren't good enough, probably because individual packs are expensive. But I was never served floor sealant by mistake either. So there's that. Milk was provided by local dairies then and my wife and I both recall how good and fresh it always was. Until my local market began selling ultra-pasteurized organic milk I had not tasted milk as good as those tiny cartons from Newmark Elementary School.
I'm sure milk sold in bags like this is cheaper than milk sold in cartons. Cut costs at your peril.
In California, it's a $500 fine for having an unlabeled container of any substance in the workplace.
Unfortunately, people still keep doing it and things get mixed up. That's why the theater crew keeps putting snow fluid in the hazers by "mistake."
"It's both a floor wax and a dessert topping!"
Blogger MadisonMan said...
I'm sure milk sold in bags like this is cheaper than milk sold in cartons. Cut costs at your peril.
First, I don't think the kids are being served milk in bags. I think the milk comes in 2.5 or 5 gallon plastic bags, most likely in a corrugated box. As so soft drink syrups. Look for the rack next time you are in Wendys or Mickeys.
So to replace the bag, you would need to have a pretty big blown plastic jug which costs $5 or so and is a big problem to get rid of.
I've not seen milk in pouches but have seen a lot of juice in pouches (which most people would call "bags") Capri Sun is a popular example.
To compare with half pint single serve milk cartons the cost of a bag or pouch is enormous.
The carton is very complex laminate with at least 3 and as many as 6 layers. Then die cut the carton, fold it and glue it.
Bags or pouches are a single flat sheet of plastic film. Often multiple layers but still a lot cheaper to make than cartons.
They are bulky to ship. 1 roll of bag or pouch stock is probably the equivalent of 5-6 pallets of of cartons. An entire trailer of cartons would be about 1 pallet worth of film rolls.
Bag/pouch forming and filling machinery is also a lot simpler and cheaper to build, operate and maintain.
Disposal is an issue. 100 cartons would probably fill a couple of 30 gallon trash cans. Maybe 1 if mashed flat. 100 empty pouches would probably not fill the small trash can I have next to my desk.
My guess would be it costs 5 times as much or more to make and fill a bag/pouch as a comparable sized carton.
And for the trivia minded, the typical juice box, almost all made on Tetra-Pak machines from Tetra-Pak film is the same as a potato chip bag. Heavier stock, squared off and ears folded over and glued.
But the material comes on a roll and is formed into a bag in the same manner as a potato chip bag.
With a lot of extra bells and whistles so it can do it aseptically. But identical material forming.
John LGBTQ Henry
I can waltz down to my local Kwik Trip and buy a gallon bag of milk any time I wish.
Floor sealer, not so much.
There are some mistakes there are no excuses for.
This is one of them.
Everyone who touched those bags and their supervisors and the people in charge of the departments they work for needs to be fired for cause.
Simple things. Starting with the most obvious- you do not store food and chemicals in the same storeroom. Period. Ever.
In this case- according to these reports= the storage media and the product inside looked similar. As John LGBTQ Henry points out- producing plastic bags en masse is relatively cheap- and I'm going to add printing on them will add some additional cost, but not much. SOMEONE noticed those items was similar and was ignored as a troublemaker. (I can guarantee this is true.) But if each bag had big letters on, the milk bags "MILK" and the other bags- "Floor Wax- Poisonous" this wouldn't have happened. And I'm also 100% certain there was smaller lettering printed on the bags that was ignored.
Oh- the bags in the cardboard boxes- that's pretty standard in cafeterias and mess halls everywhere. Open the hole on the side, pull out the plastic tube, heft the box into the dispenser, feed the tube through so the weighted handle can pinch it off, voila, another 5 gallons ready to go.
Similar to Hillary's and Pelosi's wine boxes, except the bags in them are aluminized to reduce oxidation as they're stored longer.
One good thing about floor sealer is that is smells and tastes different than milk.
that is actually two things.
my bad.
"And your father's still perfecting ways of making sealing wax"
"The widespread public (government) school system in the US has generally abandoned the mission of educating children, leaving that function to private schools, public CHARTER schools, and homeschools."
Charter schools are pretty close to being private schools, but paid for by taxpayers, (with funds taken away from public schools and diverted to charter schools, thereby starving the public schools of much-needed funds, and undermining even more the ability of public schools to adequately serve their students).
My kids were in charter schools in Sacramento, and it was honestly just like another public school. It didn't divert funds because they were being used anyhow, we just didn't go to our nearest elementary school (which was already over-crowded). The big difference was that it was a lottery system that included the local schools and about 4-5 charter schools in the neighborhood, so students were just mixed around and the charter schools were established with the expectation of parental involvement, so it was really the highly motivated kids/families who went to the charter schools and the regular public schools didn't have to try to be all things to all people.
Congress should act now to ban floor sealant from school grounds.
#NoJudgment #NoLabels Oops.
thereby starving the public schools of much-needed funds, and undermining even more the ability of public schools to adequately serve their students
Starving? Gluttonous. The public schools serve the most expensive education product in the world with progressive returns.
Yes... pillage idiot at 8:59 said it.
Leaving aside the possibility of intentional action, it seems absurdly unlikely that the mechanics of that situation would allow this mix up to actually be poured into a cup.
The fact that it was delivered on the same pallet and assumed to be milk is bad enough, but at least plausible. It is also plausible the materials were handled by inexperienced, overwhelmed, poorly trained, untrained, or apathetic workers, or worse. Considering the staggering amount of products delivered over time, almost anything can happen. Trying to prevent the one in x million (billion?) occurrence is how we end up with stupid self defeating rules and procedures. Fine print warnings that nobody reads, etc.
Back to what pillage said
..."There was a purpose fit opening in the bag to exactly fit the spout insert. A full bag exactly fit inside the compartment in the machine."
It is a feat of mechanical engineering to get something like that to fit, not leak, pour properly and on and on. Unless someone can show that the floor sealant was using the exact same standard fittings (or whatever the hell they're called), I think I'm going to call BS. Something else was going on. Maybe the machines didn't work right and staff was manually pouring the "milk" into serving containers. Something is missing from the story. Shouldn't a reporter have thought to ask: "Do milk and floor sealant use interchangeable dispensers at your facility?"
Maybe the floor sealant identified as milk
NPR goes into great detail about the sealant and nothing about the milk bags
I worked at a Dairy Queen in south Louisiana in the mid nineties. We didn’t serve milk, but the mixes we would use for frozen yogurt and ice cream always came in bags. Delivered from a major distribution company. That adhered to DQs standards. Floor cleaning other than daily mopping and such always was done by an outside usually local maintenance company. They brought their own products.
No way that would have ever happened in 94/95
As a former Chemist, I enjoy MSDS data. The two main components of this floor sealant require ingestion of 3 and 6 grams per kilogram to kill 50% of tested rats. These two components are 10% and 3%, at most, of the mixture. So the math says a rat would need to drink about 30g of fluid per kg rat weight to risk death. Less wouldn't be good for the rat, but wouldn't usually kill it.
Let's now do the math for kids, who weigh say about 25kg, assuming the same lethal dosage as the rats: 750g of liquid would need to be ingested, at minimum, to achieve a 50% chance of a lethal dose. That's what, a bit over 3 full cups of liquid!
Here's betting that a single swig of sour tasting, mouth burning floor sealant would be enough, and even then not swallowed if at all possible. The kids were at almost zero risk of serious problems from taking a sip of nasty floor sealer. Drinking water to dilute the cleaner is the recommended treatment for ingestion, per the MSDS.
Commenters above are correct about food versus chemical handling, and the procedures necessary to avoid misuse of one or the other. I, for example, once had a coworker who dipped chewing tobacco. I never picked up a soda can or coffee cup in our common work space, and never let a can or cup leave my hand until empty if I brought one back from the break room. Good safety procedure, and it prevented me killing him for his nasty habit.
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