Jakarta. Indonesian students now must consume their government-aided meals within four hours after cooking to stop more kids from falling sick, although doubts over its effectiveness remain.

President Prabowo Subianto’s free meal program has been in full swing as a means of combating malnutrition. But instead of making kids full, the meals served have caused countless kids to catch food poisoning. The pressure is now on Sudaryono — the newly appointed chief of the program’s lead agency BGN — on whether their zero-incident goal is possible. His latest strategy? Slapping some sort of expiry date labels.

“BGN has begun implementing a labeling system that states the food must be consumed within four hours of being cooked. So we urge students and teachers to check the time on the label before eating,” Sudaryono said in a video statement.

“Please don’t eat them if they have gone past the time limit.”

Sudaryono did not say whether there are replacement mechanisms for the spoiled lunches. BGN also advises the schoolkids against bringing home the meals.

“Because we don’t know the quality of the meals when brought home. We suspect it will cause poisoning for the students, and in some cases, the parents,” Sudaryono said.

His first weeks as the BGN chief have seen fresh cases of food poisoning in Indonesia’s easternmost region: Papua. Sudaryono claimed that there was a yawning time gap: the kitchens had cooked the meals at around 7 p.m., but the lunches had only gone to the classrooms the next day at 11 a.m. 

MBG Watch, a coalition of civil society organizations, is skeptical of the label’s impact on curbing food poisoning.

“The ‘4-hour rule’ is disappointing. Without comprehensive studies and evaluation, it only shows that BGN has failed to understand the food safety problems on the ground,” MBG Watch’s health policy analyst Isnawati Hidayah told the Jakarta Globe.

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