 Schools and Hospitals Compare Sustainable Food InitiativesDecember 2, Paris - Clive Peckham and other Food Lab Team members spent months making phone calls and pounding the pavement during the development phase of the Food for Health, Learning and Livelihoods (F4H) Initiative. The result: leaders of sustainable public food initiatives from seven countries, five international organizations and over 20 innovative projects gathered under the Sustainable Food Lab's F4H umbrella to coordinate efforts to promote more sustainable public and institutional food systems. The meeting was hosted by Jaques Boutalt, Mayor of the 2nd Arrondissement in Paris.
The city of Rome used to award contracts for school meals based on price. Now they use a point-based system to choose companies based on quality including environmental criteria and how much their products incorporate healthy, fresh and local food. This is just one of many innovative solutions shared during the meeting. "Even within Europe there has been little continental work in this area. It's still islands of good practice. So it's really exciting to see this broad spectrum of geographic, and sectoral representation," Clive Peckham said. Representatives from UK hospitals, government officials at both municipal and national levels, NGOs, researchers and farmers were all represented. People came from Belgium, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Italy and the U.S. The meeting built on over 10 years of work in the public food systems by Clive Peckham. “It was a great mix of people and organizations and a packed day for information and exchange. Look forward to the follow up,” said Paul Sander-Jackson, Chair of Food Links UK. The food systems that service hospitals, schools and other public and private institutions are governed by complex and interdependent networks of policy, market and legacy forces. To achieve broad-based changes these sectors must coordinate efforts. Institutional food services are part of a global economy yet need to provide quality nutrition locally. Clive Peckham said that a principle root of the problem has been that in order to add variety and diversity to public/institutional menus and simultaneously reduce personnel, infrastructure and contract costs, one option has predominated: prefabricated, ready to serve, processed food, often laden with ingredients unhealthy to body, mind and environment. This trend is being reversed, Clive Peckham said, and the challenge is, "how to change the modus operandi of the entire public/institutional food system to one based on quality and away from convenience and lowest short-term price." The meeting brought together major public and third sector organizations involved in the operation and promotion of sustainable public food systems (see presenters below). Attendees agreed to a variety of joint F4H projects going forward including: pooling research to strengthen the public policy environment, sharing information and best practices via meetings, workshops and online, creating a charter defining what sustainable public food service is, developing tendering and contract systems that create incentives for sustainable products and methods, creating methods to measure and monitor the sustainabilty of public food services and more (see Paris 2 F4H - Results: Conclusions, decisions and questions raised at the Paris Dec 2 workshop - with potential actions under F4H).
In addition, members offered to host follow up events and share resources: Laura Stewart, Foodservice Project Manager with the Marine Stewardship Council offered her expertise and resources, available throughout Europe, to develop sustainable fish supplies; Dr. Roberta Sonnino of the School of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University, offered to join the F4H working group in Europe and help organize a workshop to establish public food system sustainability metrics; Bent Mikkelsen, senior scientist at the Danish Food and Veterinary Research offered to organize a research visit/learning journey to Denmark. Sonnino said, “I don’t remember the last time I have taken part in such an interesting and stimulating event!” Members recognized the need and interest in working together. "There is huge potential for joint actions to create the system change we're all looking for; there is so much we need to do together and so much to learn from each other." Clive Peckham said. For example, Silvana Sari, Director of the Department for Education in the City of Rome described changing the way tenders (contract systems) for school meals were organized so that companies have incentives to offer higher quality. Companies get extra points and are more likely to win contracts if they use environmentally friendly materials, prove freshness (lapse of time from harvest, baking or slaughter to delivery/consumption), provide training and communication to teachers, parents and students and other social and environmental criteria. Steward said, "I really enjoyed meeting so many enthusiastic people and hearing about all the great work that is going on - and more importantly, seeing the emphasis on working together to expand on this work.” Clive Peckham said that it was exceptionally interesting to have the U.S. represented at the meeting and be able to build on the transatlantic partnership. The Meeting objectives were:
Participants made presentations that explained both the development and current operational details of the public food systems or projects they represent. The presentations are available here and included presentations from
The meeting was organized with the support of the King Baudouin Foundation and the Belgian National Lottery. For more information, contact Clive Peckham at cpeckham @ alimenterra.org. |
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