The World Union of Wholesale Markets (WUWM) has moved to set up a pan-European campaign to encourage healthy eating.
The scheme, which it hopes will be backed by funding from the European Commission (EC), would take place in markets across the continent and put a new emphasis on quality, ripe product - a focus it was suggested has been missing from previous campaigns.
The proposals were announced at the WUWM conference in Prague by Marc Spielrein, European regional chairman and president of Rungis International Market. They followed a meeting with the EC Directorate-General for Agriculture.
The campaign will be aimed at people of all ages, but primarily at children, in an attempt to increase consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables
Spielrein said: “The campaign has to be something different than the schemes which already exist. We can compile a guide to appropriate practice for fruit and vegetable handling and sale; get kids on board with seasonal product maybe through school canteens; and show the EC we want to follow the market value concept.
“It has to be said that markets have tried to achieve this kind of project before and we all know that EU funding is getting rarer, but the DG of Agriculture has asked us to prepare and submit plans.”
WUWM chairman Graham Wallace told freshinfo: “Although it is across all ages we really need to focus on children as, by the time they are teenagers, people are already set in their ways. There are a lot of good schemes out there but perhaps in the past they haven’t focused enough on quality, ripeness and taste. If you give a child a dry apple it isn’t going to do anything - it has to be of good quality.
“In the meeting with the DG of Agriculture we were treated as a professional organisation representative of our industry and hopefully this will manifest itself in funding. However, we hope individual markets will do it themselves even without EC backing. We just want to encourage healthy eating and we are a good vehicle to increase awareness and consumption. We will look to national association such as the National Association of British Market Authorities and German Wholesale Markets to help implement the programme.”
WUWM indicated a framework paper would be brought together for its next wholesale conference in Paris in September, with a possible pilot project to follow.
