School fires cook who served chili with kangaroo meat to students

POTTER, Neb. -- The cook who mixed kangaroo meat into the chili he made for students at a Nebraska Panhandle school has lost his job. Potter-Dix Schools Superintendent Mike Williams said Thursday the junior/senior high school's head cook in Potter, Kevin Frei, no longer works for the district.

Williams said in a Wednesday letter to parents that Frei told him he'd augmented the chili's beef on Oct. 10 with kangaroo meat because it is lean and nutritious. Williams says the meat came from a food distributor, which must meet federal requirements.

Williams says he doesn't think the kangaroo meat was unhealthy or dangerous, but it was "without a doubt not a normal staple of our diet."

He apologized for any anxiety the exotic ingredient may have caused and vowed that such incidents will not recur.

"If a family wants to eat exotic foods, they can do so on their own time – not at school," Williams said, according to KNEP. "If we were to have food or ingredients that are out of the ordinary, they should be listed on the menu so that the students and families are aware of what they would be being served. We will no way be serving food of this nature again. Period."