What types of foods can be safely reserved?

Once a food touches the student's tray it has been served. Once served, most foods cannot be re-served to anybody. The only foods that can be re-served under very limited circumstances are unopened, non-potentially hazardous, commercially packaged foods. This would include but not be limited to:

commercially packaged cookies (not cookies that have been packed in-house),
bags of chips or pretzels,
packaged burritos and other pre-packaged sandwiches and
juice boxes.

For example, if a student is going through the serving line and puts a juice box on his tray and discovers that he cannot pay for it, the juice box can be recovered by the cashier and re-served to another student. "Recover" means that the cashier can take back the food and then serve the food to another student. However, if the student pays for the item, leaves the serving line, and then wants to return the item, the item cannot be recovered and re-served.

All schools should address food defense in their policies. Food defense focuses on protecting food from intentional contamination, whereas, food safety focus on the unintentional contamination of food. Once a food is in the student's possession and the student is out-of-sight of the Child Nutrition staff, there is greater likelihood that the food might become contaminated.

NOTE: The standards outlined in the NC School HACCP Plan are minimum standards. Therefore, the Child Nutrition Director has the option of establishing a higher standard. Thus, the Child Nutrition Director might prohibit the recovery or re-serving of any food, including commercially packaged foods.