A TikTok video from October asked viewers to “imagine” receiving an email from a teacher asking parents not to include pork in their children's school lunches to avoid offending religious students.
Some people who shared the video claimed that Ontario and other Canadian school boards banned pork products out of consideration for Muslim students.
However, there is no evidence to support the existence of such emails or pork bans in schools.
“Imagine receiving an email from your child's teacher asking them to no longer put pork in their lunch boxes because it's offensive to some of the kids in the class,” says the creator of a TikTok video posted in early October. The video has since been viewed over 600,000 times.
“Imagine for a moment that some parents are writing emails to teachers saying that their Canadian children come to school with bacon or ham on their sandwiches and that it's offensive to their religion,” he says.
One user claimed in a Facebook post that an Ontario school told parents they couldn't put pork in their child's lunch because it “insults Muslims.”
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Muslims cannot consume pork products due to Islamic dietary regulations.
A similar post appeared multiple times on the X platform (previously Twitter).
On YouTube, a creator whose content was featured in Canadian Press Fact Check for sharing a doctored video of a Welsh Muslim woman posted a video titled, “What? Pork is now banned in Canada?!”
The video (archived here) claims that Ontario schools are “banning” pork products and cites the original TikTok video as evidence.
The original TikTok video included the hashtags for the province of Alberta, Calgary, and “cbe,” which stands for Calgary Board of Education.
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The Canadian Press reached out to the Calgary School Board and the Toronto District School Board, which have the largest numbers of primary and secondary students in Alberta and Ontario.
“We are not aware of this rumor. Due to a province-wide labor action by the Alberta Teachers Association, our schools have been closed since October 6. The Calgary School Board does not restrict the lunches or snacks that parents may provide to their children,” a spokesperson told The Canadian Press in an email.
A TDSB spokesperson said the board was unaware of the rumors.
The Canadian Press has contacted the video creator and will update this check if we hear back.
There is no evidence to support the purported ban on pork in Ontario schools. Keyword searches yielded no results, and the only media coverage was about TikTok videos.
Ontario has food and beverage policies that apply to schools in the province. However, the only foods that are not allowed are products sold in schools that “contain little or no essential nutrients and/or contain high amounts of fat, sugar, and/or sodium.” This standard does not apply to food brought from home or purchased off school grounds.
The Calgary School Board has a similar policy that food sold to students meets nutritional requirements, but there is no outright ban on pork products.
Fact-checkers have previously debunked similar rumors about banning pork in schools. An old hoax from around 2014 resurfaced in 2021 and was claimed by Dorval, Que. The mayor insulted Muslims after being asked to remove pork from a school cafeteria.
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