District Removes ‘Pink Slime’ From Freezers, Lunch Menu

The Fort Lee school district has removed all boxes of beef from its inventory it could not certify as being free of the cheap filler commonly known as “pink slime,” school officials said Monday.

A parent raised the issue at a previous meeting, but Interim Superintendent Steven Engravalle put those concerns to rest Monday, saying, “Anything that was in our freezers has been removed.”

“[‘Pink slime’] is a slang term that’s given for beef additives,” Engravalle said. “It’s a beef filler that has an ammonia derivative that has caused a great deal of discussion in the public.”

He said that after the question first came up and lean finely textured beef, or “pink slime,” first came into public consciousness, school officials had a “sit-down meeting” with the district’s head of food services.

“We sat with him to decide if it was possible to do such a thing, and now all suspected pink slime beef has been removed from the menu,” Engravalle said. “So if your children have a taco or anything like that for the rest of the year, that we can guarantee does not include the pink slime.”

Engravalle said he would issue a formal letter soon with certification from the head of food services that the school district has removed and will not be serving anything but Grade A certified ground beef that’s free of the additive.

“I asked him to issue a letter to me to guarantee that because that’s a great concern to all of us,” Engravalle said. “But the pink slime is not on our menu so there is no reason to be concerned, nor will it be part of any of the federal school lunch programs in the State of New Jersey as we move forward. But anything in the freezers has been removed.”

Fort Lee parent Christina Yoo, who had initially raised the issue, said she was concerned that the school district’s food service management provider, Chartwells, had been using pink slime beef in the first place.

“I ask my son to sometimes bring a leftover sandwich, and it turns out that the kids are just not even taking a bite of the food, and it all goes down to the garbage,” Yoo said.

She also asked if the board has considered changing the company “that provides breakfast and lunch to our children.”

As that turns out, it’s not such a simple matter, explained school board president Arthur Levine, because the food services contract is bid out, and “historically” only Chartwells submits bids.

Business administrator Cheryl Balletto explained how the process for selecting a food service management provider works, saying that she sends out letters to each company in the district’s “northern service area.”

“The state has a list of what companies do that, and then they have to respond back to me, either that they’re interested or not interested in submitting a bid,” Balletto said.

She said the last time she did that, which she said was three summers ago, Chartwells was indeed “the only one interested.”

“Everyone else wrote me letters that they already had too much business or they couldn’t fit it in,” Balletto said, adding, “Chartwells has been in the district for over 15 years.”

On March 27, an employee with the third-party cafeteria vendor at on child endangerment charges, further adding to concern about the company.

“We’re going to open it up, and hopefully others will apply,” Levine said. “Quite frankly, from what I’ve seen, I’d like to see other people apply.”