The team found 487 cases in which schools granted deals to some food firms at the expense of the quality of food through an unfair bidding process. Of these cases, 16 involved bid rigging and schools’ cozy relationships with food firms owned by school staff members’ families and acquaintances.

According to the probe, some nutritionists ordered food items from particular companies in return for rebates such as gifts, cash cards and movie tickets.

Four food firms -- Dongwon, Daesang, CJ Freshway and Pulmuone -- are suspected of offering kickbacks worth 1.6 billion won to nutritionists at 3,000 schools for the past 2 1/2 years in exchange for a business contract to procure food ingredients for school meals.

The taskforce found that dubious deals led to shady execution of the schools’ budgets, an increase in food prices and the poor quality control of ingredients for school lunches.

A total of 68 cases involved the lax monitoring of cooking staff’s health conditions, poor hygiene in handling ingredients, false reports about the sanitary of storage rooms and vehicles transporting food.

In 118 cases, schools failed to inspect the quality of ingredients, using food whose expiry date was over or whose country of origin was falsified

About 6.14 million students at 11,698 elementary, middle and high schools across the country enjoy school meals daily as of 2015, costing the government 56 trillion won in budget.

Following the inspection, the government laid out a plan to improve the quality and safety of school meals and root out unfair practices by 2017.

The government plans to set up a website and mobile application dedicated to informing the public of results of the evaluation on school meals hygiene and safety as well as the ingredient supply system. It will develop a standardized menu to narrow differences in the quality of school meals in 17 cities and order a regular inspection of food suppliers. Some 170 parents will be tasked with overseeing school-operated kitchens and meals across the country.

Meanwhile, some 730 students at five schools in Seoul, Busan, Daegu and Bonghwa across the nation showed symptoms of food poisoning after having school meals, health authorities said Tuesday.

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety cited food ingredients spoiled by the continued heat wave as a cause and it has collected cooking tools, water and food from the schools for a relevant agency to conduct an in-depth investigation. The results are expected in about a week.

The Education Ministry and the MFDS rolled out a plan to prevent food poisoning from spreading to other schools at a news briefing later in the day.

The ministries said that it will bring forward a scheduled inspection on school kitchens and food supplier to Wednesday. It will also adopt a quicker system to find out the cause of the food poisoning and to inform other schools of a possible breakout of the disease.

By Ock Hyun-ju (laeticia.ock@heraldcorp.com)