Michigan National Guardsmen tasked with keep protecting The U.S. Capitol said it provided food that was “poorly cooked, raw, moldy and even stuffed with metal shavings,” according to a letter from the State House of Representatives obtained by CBS News on Tuesday. Some guards were admitted to the hospital after eating the food, the letter reads.
“It is clear that these contracted meals are poorly prepared, often inedible and highly inadequate to support our soldiers,” the 14 lawmakers said in a letter sent to the head of the National Guard in the Pentagon. “It is completely unacceptable that our men and women who serve in Washington, DC are hospitalized because of the food they are provided with.”
The letter calls for the National Guard to terminate its contract with its current food supplier and find a new supplier or give the guards a daily allowance for the rest of their time in the Capitol.
In his own letter, Michigan Senator Gary Peters, said the guards are “fed with chicken with the feathers still attached and raw mince.” As a result, he said, the 983 members of the state’s national guard still protecting the Capitol often had to be forced to buy food with their own money.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said on Tuesday he was not aware of the reports, but said the Pentagon aims to ensure that all guards “get the support they deserve”. The national guard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Representative Bill Huizenga, one of the signatories to the Home Letter, said in a Facebook Live broadcast on Tuesday night that he had been fighting for weeks to get the guardians adequate food after concerned friends and family members called his office. He said there were problems with ‘freshness’, as well as ‘cases of mold and other insects in the food.’ He also said that guards receive raw and overcooked food.
Huizenga, a Republican, said he thinks the issue has been resolved. But in recent days, he has said he has received reports of metal shavings in food – possibly from steel wool blocks – as well as more cases of raw, undercooked and “inedible” food.
“It’s not acceptable. It’s completely unacceptable,” he said.
About one-fifth of the National Guard troops still working within the Capitol perimeter are from Michigan, CBS affiliate WUSA9 reported. All National Guard soldiers will leave the Capitol site by March 12.
This is not the first time lawmakers have challenged the treatment of guards at the Capitol. At the end of January, legislators indignation expressed after guards were asked to leave the Capitol building and rest in their shifts in a parking garage. The guards were quickly re-admitted.
Eleanor Watson reported.