Since the NHS Plan of 2000 revealed our nation’s children as being well behind the rest of Europe in their consumption of fresh produce, the National School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme, under the umbrella of the 5 a day campaign, has been acting to remedy the situation.
Appointed by the Department of Health (DoH) to provide the supply chain expertise for the project, the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency (NHS PASA) is responsible for co-ordinating the delivery of every piece of produce from source to school.
As NHS PASA purchasing manager, Mike Tiddy has more than a few balls to juggle at any one time to maintain the smooth operation of a complexly integrated scheme. According to Tiddy the initial objective was clear, but the scale of the task immense. “How do you change the lives of every child in the country, because that is the challenge of a project to supply a piece of fruit and vegetable to every four to six year old in Local Education Authority (LEA) maintained infant, primary and special schools on every school day?” he says.
“The numbers are huge - 16,069 schools need a supply chain every day so that two million young consumers will taste a different fruit or vegetable on every school day. These are the people that we want to influence for the rest of their lives not just on the day of consumption. The produce needs to be safe, nutritious and ripe and ready to eat.”
Following the success of pilots undertaken nationwide in 2000 and 2001, the scheme has grown, region by region, with the help of a £42m donation from the New Opportunities Fund. The pilot inspired sufficient interest from the trade and ensured once the scheme moved to the contract stage there would be a sufficient number of suppliers to be able to fulfil contracting options. Tiddy explains. “The next objective, once we had the firm requirement, was to build a contract with the value and volume to make it viable. There are nine government office regions in England and we chose the West Midlands as the most likely region to achieve success.”
When supply to the West Midlands began in 2001, the objective was for additional regions to join the scheme term-by-term so that they would all be up and running by the end of the implementation in November 2004. While the adoption process did not happen quite as periodically as intended, by April 2004, the scheme had been rolled out in the West Midlands, London, the North West, the East Midlands and the North East. And the remaining four regions - the South East, South West, East and Yorkshire and the Humber - were implemented together in Autumn 2004.
With an additional 200 tonnes of fresh produce now consumed on a daily basis, the scheme is having a significant impact on the fruit and vegetable trade and Tiddy believes this will continue. “Hopefully this is just a starting point and as children generate demand from school tuck shops, school dinners and in local retail outlets, the general consumption of fruit and vegetables should increase.”
The scheme aims to allow children to taste a different produce item every day and the current products included are apples, bananas, pears, soft citrus, strawberries, cherry tomatoes and carrots, depending on availability. While no fruit or vegetable is deliberately excluded, the ease of facilitation, and importantly, with the aim of encouraging greater interest, the likelihood of children eating them has to be considered.
Following a detailed evaluation of the scheme by COI Communications and the DoH in November 2004, participants in the scheme have discovered the children’s preferences across the country. While different regions have produced different favourites, all were united in their preference for fruit over vegetables, with bananas and easy peel citrus ranking top of the list. Children in London were particularly keen on bananas with 89 per cent saying they liked them a lot.
Meanwhile pears, tomatoes, and carrots proved least popular, producing much larger percentages of surplus produce than the other items. A third of children didn’t like pears or tomatoes much or at all, followed by carrots which a quarter of children didn’t like. However, despite 20 per cent of these items being left by children, wastage generally remained pretty low, since surplus items were often distributed to other children or staff.
Importantly, surplus was not generally owing to poor quality produce, with 96 per cent of participants ranking the produce as fairly or very good. The North East and West Midlands faired the best in this category, with only three per cent rating the quality as fairly or very poor, whereas schools in the North East were least satisfied with eight per cent considering their produce of fairly or very poor quality. However, this had no bearing on levels of consumption.
In terms of the distribution service, the results were largely equally positive, with four in five schools saying the delivery was very good overall. The majority were satisfied with drivers and any responses from the depot to queries, and said any disruption at the start of the term quickly settled down. The majority of drivers were considered polite and helpful, although providing enough time for deliveries to be checked and signed for was an area requiring some improvement in a number of regions.
With a project of this scale, such feedback is integral to ensure all aspects of the scheme are running in accordance with all its specifications. “A project of this size, the only one of its type in the world, needs help and advice from many different sources,” Tiddy says. “The DoH provides the drive and project management skills to ensure that the implementation work is done in conjunction with other government departments and where feasible to aid other governmental departments’ objectives. Of course, the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), Defra and the Food Standards Agency (FSA) have prime roles to play in this project.”
The supply chain arrangements are supported by the FPC and National Farmers’ Union. NHS PASA operates separate contracts for the supply and distribution of the produce. There are 14 companies supplying produce and 15 providing distribution from 23 sites across England, resulting in an expenditure of approximately £40m per year. NHS PASA established a product supply calendar for each region, designed to provide children with a different produce item every day, and products are usually supplied in packs of 10 for a specific day. For example, Thursdays are typically banana days, and distributors must co-ordinate deliveries such that they are ripe and ready to eat on the date specified. There are 150 LEAs in England, with between one and 400 schools within their boundaries. Provided they meet the accreditation requirements, prospective distributors may tender for one or more of these LEAs.
Since the SFVS scheme started, it has been continually evaluated in line with objectives outlined by Defra, in accordance with the Public Sector Food Procurement Initiative in 2003. For example, UK produce must be sourced from registered members of the Assured Produce Scheme and imported produce must comply with EurepGAP specifications. Some objectives have yet to be achieved, including the minimisation of waste. To this end NHS PASA is currently piloting a bio-degradable bag and examining the possibility of using returnable trays.
The issue of food traceability is also increasingly important and the leaders of the scheme are looking at sourcing possibilities. At the moment, 38 per cent of the produce used is supplied from UK sources, including autumn carrots, apples, pears and strawberries, and cucumbers are to be trialled this year. However, the most popular fruit options, and kiwi fruit which is also awaiting trials, are incompatible with the UK climate.
These issues were discussed at a meeting earlier this year headed by the leading bodies of the scheme. In accordance with the industry wide interest in pesticide levels, the SFVS is undergoing a sampling programme. The tests are designed to determine whether suppliers are providing fruit and vegetables that are as good, with respect to pesticide residues, as the average produce available from retail outlets, and whether residues comply with Maximum Residue Levels (MRLs).
Given that education is the driving force behind the scheme, it is essential that children supplement their practical enjoyment of the fruit with background information. As such, the curriculum has been modified to include lessons about fruit and vegetables, complete with posters, videos and songs. Meanwhile, teachers have been guided as to the best methods of preparation and parents have received information packs to encourage greater consumption of produce at home as well as in school.
So far, all the signs are positive and the benefits of the scheme are being shared by all involved. According to Tiddy, teachers have reported a general improvement in the atmosphere of their classes, with the introduction of fruit and veg encouraging a calmer and more communal environment. One parent in East Sussex wrote Tiddy a particularly enthusiastic letter last December. “Our six-year old daughter ate very little fruit before the scheme started and would only eat a limited choice such as strawberries,” the letter said. “Now she eats her fruit at school every day, trying and eating a wide variety. Although we still can’t get her to eat some of them at home she has developed a liking for some of the new fruits as a result of the scheme and her health must be benefiting tremendously. For example, she now grabs a clementine for her lunch box every day.”
