Singapore suspends national meal programme following food poisoning

Singapore on Thursday temporarily halted a two-day-old national preparedness initiative which involves ready-to-eat meals, following cases of food poisoning at the School of the Arts (SOTA) arising from the meals.

In a joint statement, the Singapore Food Agency (SFA), together with the Ministry of Education (MOE), Agency for Integrated Care (AIC) and food caterer SATS, said it will pause the Food Resilience Preparedness Programme as a precautionary measure until investigations on the SOTA gastroenteritis cases are concluded.

Channel News Asia first reported about the gastroenteritis cluster at SOTA on Wednesday, believed to be linked with food given at the campus.

A total of 20 students developed symptoms such as diarrhoea, nausea and vomiting after consuming the meals. The ready-to-eat meals were originally intended to be distributed to over 100,000 students and teachers from more than 90 schools as part of this year's Food Resilience Preparedness Programme, an initiative led by SFA.

Beyond the schools, it had also planned to work with AIC to distribute the meals to seniors at Active Ageing Centres across the island, with over 8,000 seniors across 111 centres taking part. The meals were developed by SATS for public consumption during national emergencies.

Leveraging its experience in producing army combat rations, SATS designed these meals to be stored without refrigeration and eaten at room temperature and to have a shelf life of up to eight months.

SOTA students had been provided with the meals on Tuesday as part of Exercise SG Ready, which simulates crises such as power outages and disruptions to food supplies under the Total Defence banner. SG is short for Singapore.

The affected students form about 1 per cent of the total number of students in the school who consumed ready-to-eat meals, said SFA, MOE, the Ministry of Health and SATS on Wednesday.