More than 400 students in schools in Cairo, Suez, and Aswan have fallen ill due to food poisoning from government-issued school meals over the course of two days this week, the Associated Press reports. The school meals causing the waves of food poisoning are produced by military-owned company, Al Nasr for Services and Maintenance, and include what one mother describes as “a suspicious-looking piece of cheese with a label that we’ve never seen before.” Tuesday and Wednesday’s cases are the latest in a string of incidents of schoolchildren suffering from food poisoning as a result of the school meals, including last week’s hospitalization of 2,200 students in Sohag. Education Minister Tarek Shawki issued a decision yesterday to indefinitely halt the issuing of school meals across the country, effective starting today, and to form a committee to launch a full investigation, Al Masry Al Youm reports. Already on the table: Plenty of new red tape on meal inspection and procedures for storing and distributing the meals.

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