Wednesday, February 09, 2000

By MARK VOSBURGH

PLAIN DEALER REPORTER

Chicken nuggets and patties, a lunch favorite of thousands of Ohio school children, may contain meat from birds with festering sores, but the meat poses no threat to health, state education officials said yesterday.

Thoroughly cooking the meat will kill bacteria from diseased chickens, the Ohio Department of Education reported in an advisory to more than 600 public and private schools. The department also reported that it is testing stockpiles of the frozen nuggets.

"All indications tell us this is a safe product," department spokeswoman Dorothea Howe said. "Yet ... we feel we need to make sure."

While waiting two weeks for test results, some Ohio school districts including Cleveland and Akron intend to stop serving the nuggets and patties. No districts, however, have linked the chicken to illnesses.

"We are going to isolate the product as a precaution," said Cleveland schools spokesman Dan Minnich.

The state issued the advisory after U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors alleged that a Gold Kist poultry processing plant in Alabama allowed employees to mix chickens with pus-filled sores and scabs into nuggets and patties.

Gold Kist, however, yesterday denied that any of the chicken processed in Alabama was delivered to schools in Ohio. "It has no effect on Ohio," said Paul Brower, a spokesman for the Georgia-based company.

Brower blamed complaints about the chickens on a dispute between the inspectors union and the agriculture department over a proposed new inspection method that could eliminate jobs.

"We’ve been caught in a battle between them and their employers," he said. "Gold Kist is an innocent victim."

USDA spokeswoman Carol Blake confirmed that some diseased birds end up in patties and nuggets that are sent to schools across the nation as part of a federally subsidized lunch program.

But Blake said the diseased birds do not warrant a recall of Gold Kist products.

"They may not look as pretty," Blake said of chickens with sores and scabs. "But they do not pose a food-safety issue."

E-mail: mvosburg@plaind.com

Phone: (216) 999-5519