Nine o’clock grocery store｜The stinky pork in the school cafeteria

On June 23, in Huaying Experimental Primary School, Fushun County, Zigong, Sichuan, many parents reported that the school canteen used stinky pork. Video footage showed a large number of parents gathering at the school gate to demand an explanation.

According to media reports, some parents told reporters that because their children always had stomachaches, they went to the canteen to monitor and found that the meat they searched was rotten. Some parents found that the supplier’s vehicle was loaded with bad meat, which emitted a foul odor.

Parents took photos and recorded videos to preserve evidence, and the school said it would “give everyone an explanation.” The Fushun County Education and Sports Bureau stated that it has joined forces with market supervision and other departments to seal the raw and auxiliary materials questioned by the parents on the spot and is conducting inspection and testing. And it is working with relevant departments to conduct investigations, and once illegal and non-compliant behavior is found, it will be dealt with seriously in accordance with the law.

Food safety incidents in school canteens have been commonplace in recent years. Just over a month ago, in May 2025, a large number of wriggling live maggots were found in the meat grinder of a school canteen in Yuyao, Zhejiang. Ironically, the school involved had also received the title of “Zhejiang Province Grade A Canteen.”

Earlier, in October 2024, Changfeng School in Kunming, Yunnan, was found to have stinky meat in its canteen, “the whole basin of meat was stinky.” After local investigations, the school and the canteen contracting enterprise were involved in multiple illegal and non-compliant behaviors. In the end, the enterprise involved was fined 5.78 million yuan, and the school’s management responsible person was investigated.

There is nothing new under the sun. But I searched this news online, and after a few hours, the topic of “Official response to a primary school in Zigong using spoiled pork” had only 130,000 views, not to mention making it to the trending topics.

This gives me a feeling of suffocation. The school canteen safety incidents that are always repeated have made people no longer angry, and even numb, and even the interest in watching has disappeared.

The media is lazy to report, and the public no longer watches. School food safety incidents are still happening, but everything has become calm, as calm as stagnant water.

This is a suffocating calm!

There was also a piece of news these two days that the director of the general affairs office and the purchaser of a middle school in Hunan embezzled the students’ food expenses. They were sentenced to four years and six months and two years in prison, respectively, for corruption of 2.4 million yuan and 1.09 million yuan.

2.4 million yuan, 1.09 million yuan, these two people embezzled nearly 3.5 million yuan. How many pieces of meat and how many bowls of rice do they need to take from the students’ bowls? When the student canteen becomes a “cash machine” for corruption, can the food in the student canteen be good?