Local schools are taking steps to ensure their food is safe following a beef recall. The federal government recalled 143 million pounds of beef from the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company. Thousands of school districts across the country received the meat, including South Bend.

School Corporation officials told WSBT News they received a shipment of 15 bags of taco meat and cases of rotini with beef in it. Those have been pulled and will not be served to students. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the risk to children is negligible, but it recalled the meat because proper inspection procedures weren't followed.

The recall has other school districts taking stock of their food procedures. Penn-Harris-Madison schools serve thousands of meals every school day.

“It's a big operation, so it's very important to us that everything is handled properly,” said Lisa Riggs, Food Safety Director for Penn-Harris-Madison Schools.

PHM Schools have a 40-page food safety plan. They did not receive any recalled meat. In fact, they say all of their meat comes to them pre-cooked, then it's brought up to safe temperatures to serve to students.

“When our food comes in, we look for any signs,” Riggs said. “If we get broken cases, we don't accept them. If we get food at the wrong temperature, say if we got ground beef in that's supposed to be frozen, and it comes in thawed, then we don't take it.”

Elkhart Schools did receive some of the recalled meat. The school corporation will now have to juggle some menus in the short-term, until there’s a new shipment of beef.

“Earlier this month, we received notice that some of the beef products we received were subject to a hold,” said Doug Hasler, Support Services Director for Elkhart Community Schools. “We separated that out and made sure we did not include that in any of our meal preparation.”

The school corporations say they’re certain there are no other recalled foods in their systems and all of the food they're serving is safe.

To see a list of all Indiana schools that reported receiving recalled meat, click on "Beef Recall: What you need to know" in the Related Content box.