Khaberni - The Indonesian Food and Drug Agency revealed that more than 9,000 children have suffered from food poisoning due to consuming free school meals since the beginning of the year.
The Food and Drug Agency announced today, Wednesday, that the number of children affected by food poisoning reached 9,089 children between January and September 2025, as a result of consuming free school meals, which exceeds previous estimates. This led to urgent parliamentary calls for improving food safety standards in the country.
The controversy over the meals program
These incidents have prompted health organizations to call for the suspension of the school meals program launched by President Prabowo Subianto at a cost of ten billion dollars. Despite the criticisms, the president confirmed that the rate of injuries remains limited compared to the number of program beneficiaries.
During a parliamentary session, the agency clarified that 103 cases of food poisoning have been recorded from the beginning of the year until September 2025. The agency's head, Taruna Ikrar, confirmed that the injuries had seen a significant increase since the end of July, peaking in August, and pointed out that the cooking method in the kitchens was the main reason, as most of these kitchens had only been operating for a few weeks.
Ikrar explained that the investigations revealed that the poisoning resulted from the distribution of meals more than four hours after cooking, in addition to poor storage of the ingredients, and a lack of knowledge about food safety basics among the workers.
Violations in program management
For his part, Dadan Hendayana, head of the National Nutrition Agency overseeing the program, said that numerous violations occurred in the participating kitchens, notably buying ingredients four days before their use instead of two, which contributed to the increase in poisoning cases in the last two months, noting that 6,517 cases were recorded between January and September 2025 alone.
