Add the USDA to the List of Government Agencies that Need to be Ripped Out Root and Branch

The USDA is issuing edicts that result in at least one local school inspecting and summarily rejecting a perfectly fine home packed lunch.

A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because a state employee told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.

The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes in her More at Four classroom that day.

The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs — including in-home day care centers — to meet USDA guidelines. That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home.

Not your job, USDA or HHS. Now shut up and leave people alone. HHS in particular needs a whip cracked to it.

When home-packed lunches do not include all of the required items, child care providers must supplement them with the missing ones.

They only know if the lunch meets the guidelines — aka mandates — if they personally inspect each individual lunch. That’s on the state of North Carolina for passing a regulation that has set off schools inspecting home packed lunches.

The girl’s mother — who said she wishes to remain anonymous to protect her daughter from retaliation —

Fear is the jackboot government’s ally. Here, it’s fear that the local elementary school will retaliate against a four-year-old or her mother if she objects to an obviously insane policy. Land of the free?

said she received a note from the school stating that students who did not bring a “healthy lunch” would be offered the missing portions, which could result in a fee from the cafeteria, in her case $1.25.

It’s nice to know that life in America is so perfect that we can afford to pay government agents to rip turkey sandwiches out of four-year-old mouths.

Seriously, did no one in the school stop to think that inspecting kids’ home packed lunches, and essentially telling the kid that her mother is incompetent to pack a lunch, was just wrong? That this was something they ought not do?

This line in the story is touching, in the same manner of the TSA:

There are no clear restrictions about what additional items — like potato chips — can be included in preschoolers’ lunch boxes.

Restrictions. In kids’ school lunches. Land of the free?

Apologies won’t do here. Firings have to happen. Start with the school’s idiot principal, who probably makes six figures for being a useless tool of the state, and fire everyone down the line who had anything to do with this. A message has to be sent that free people won’t take this petty thuggery anymore.