Campaigners at the Children’s Food Campaign (CFC) have welcomed government initiatives to improve the quality and take-up of school meals while European counterparts expressed extreme concerns over the School Fruit Scheme, which holds similar healthy eating goals.
The CFC welcome the government’s approach to school meals but called for more investment on school facilities so that all pupils have the opportunity to enjoy hot midday meals freshly prepared on site.
Campaign co-ordinator Christine Haigh said: “The new rules on school food are good news. Jamie Oliver showed us what happens if you do not have rules on the quality of school food. If these new rules were removed, we’d soon be back to Turkey Twizzlers again.
“All the evidence shows that providing free school meals for all has wide-ranging benefits, from improving children’s eating habits and behaviour to reducing health inequalities and reducing childhood obesity. It’s great to see the government is seriously considering this policy and that children in these two areas are already benefiting.”
But European industry body Freshfel said in a statement that the European Commission had not done its homework on the School Fruit Scheme.
It said: “As children return back to school across Europe for the 2009-10 school year, Freshfel Europe remains concerned by the great number of pending duties for the European Commission to secure a successful implementation of the European School Fruit Scheme. Considerable uncertainty indeed remains about the effective and efficient implementation of the School Fruit Scheme by member states.
“Besides this, the lack of consistency and control by the commission with regards to eligible products, the weakness of the EU communication about the programme, the significant delay in the launch of an ambitious pan-European website, the failure to conduct an ex ante impact assessment and the inertia of the commission to create an expert advisory committee are some of the crucial remaining duties for the European Commission.”
Philippe Binard, general delegate of Freshfel Europe, added: ”The council allocated to the commission an annual budget of €1.3 million (£1.1m) to perform the tasks of communication and networking, including specifically the development of a dedicated website and the setting up of committee meetings
of experts to share best practice. To date, these projects remain pending and the financial resources made available for the fruit and vegetable sector might be lost or used by the commission for other priorities.”
Freshfel is also concerned about the difficulties in Germany for the launch of the programme. The country had intended to implement one of the largest programmes with an allocation worth 23 per cent of the EU budget available for the School Fruit Scheme, but is having difficulty making up the remainder of its €40m yearly budget.
