The University of Iowa Housing and Dining department is facing a large issue addressing bugs and mold being found in dining hall food items.

Insects in salads and moldy pizza are among some issues that UI students are complaining about.

Hillcrest Market Place and Burge Hall are the two dining hall locations that serve thousands of students and staff every day.

Mistakes happen, but recently they’ve been happening more. There have been incidents of insects found in food as often as twice a week.

“If somebody comes to us and says ‘I found a bug in my salad,’ we’re going to apologize and find out what salad it was it,” said UIHD director Von Stange. “We’re going to dump that salad, and then we’re going to make sure that we talk to the distributor and to the manufacturer to make sure [we know] where it comes from.”

The bugs and mold aren’t coming from the marketplaces, they’re coming from the manufacturers.

The pizza came from DiGiorno, a frozen pizza company, that was distributed by the company and sent to UIHD, Stange said.

“Obviously, there was an error with it,” Stange said. “We’re going to replace the pizza. That was a prepackaged product that we really don’t have a lot of control over.”

UI has control over relationships with food distributors and relations in the future.

Daily Iowan TV has the full story