Facing increasing pressure from parents and the media, the USDA announced it would allow schools to choose whether or not they would serve pink slime to kids at lunch.

Isn't that nice. The government is allowing schools to choose what beef products they serve on the school lunch line. Now, if the government could just go a few thousand steps forward and allow local schools total control over everything kids eat. 

As I explained over on NRO earlier this week, pink slime isn't turning up on your kid's lunch tray because some cruel USDA bureaucrat decided to ship cheap meat scraps to kids (in fairness, pink slime doesn't appear to be the horror-show meat product the media is spinning it to be.  Read the real story on pink slime here). 

The real reason we have pink slime on the school lunch line is simple: the government's just too big.  If local school districts, in cooperation with school boards and parent's groups, had a say in what kids were being fed at school, we probably would see this type of product on the school lunch line. But when we cede the feeding of our children to the federal government, why are we all surprised that pink slime get served?

I'm happy that the USDA is giving schools the choice on this matter but there's still work to be done to bring school lunches back into the control of local communities.