(Photo: CGTN)

The head of a well-known international school in east China's Shanghai Municipality has been dismissed as health and education authorities investigate the discovery of rotten food in a kitchen preparing food for students.

The Shanghai Municipal Food and Drug Administration started a food safety investigation into SMIC Private School after parents saw moldy tomatoes and onions in the school kitchen on Friday. 

The food supplier, Shanghai Eurest Food Technologies Service Company, has been put under investigation and its catering services have been suspended. 

The incident triggered wide concerns across the city since the food supplier also serves as a vendor to most of Shanghai's international schools.

The SMIC Private School, located in Shanghai's Pudong area, is funded by China's largest semiconductor producer, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC). The school charges 24 yuan per day as a standard cost for each students' lunch.

Parents of the SMIC school began to look into what their children were eating at school when a parent visited the school last Wednesday and happened to see their lunch consisted of only two steamed stuffed buns, a duck leg, a small serving of vegetables and a pack of milk – very different from the menu the school had told parents it would be providing, according to a report in Xinmin Evening News.

Photographs taken by a parent and posted on social media sparked angry responses from other parents, who pressured the school to hold a meeting with them on Friday to discuss the catering situation.

At the event, some of the parents asked to visit the kitchen and the school agreed. They were shocked to find badly moldy tomatoes and onions in the baskets for raw vegetables.

"I finally got to know the reason for my kid's frequent vomiting and diarrhea," an anonymous mother wrote on her WeChat account.

Shanghai Eurest Food Technologies Service Company is wholly-owned by the UK-based Compass Group and provides catering services for 28 schools in Shanghai. 

An "unannounced inspection" was promptly conducted in the canteens in all 28 schools that use Eurest and the company's storage facilities by authorities after parents contacted the police and the food monitoring authority on October 19.

The inspection report shows one bottle of seasoning with a fake production date was found at SMIC Shengda Kindergarten. A bottle of expired seasoning and some out-of-date bread were found in a dustbin at Shanghai Concordia International School's kitchen. 

No food safety issues were found in the other 26 school canteens and storage facilities.