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Good Food on the Public Plate
Nuggets: Good Food on the Public Plate newsletter

September 2009

Participant Profile:  London Borough of Enfield

London Borough of Enfield service 76 schools through their in house catering services. With Good Food on the Public Plate an audit was carried out on existing supplies to establish the sustainability of the products bought. This resulted in an immediate switch to Free Range Eggs. Enfield were recently awarded a Good Egg by Compassion in World Farming. Work is continuing on ensuring a sustainable fish menu is offered. Recently Enfield extended this approach to their fruit and vegetable supplies. By working with their current supplier Enfield were able to identify regionally produced seasonal food available at affordable prices, they plan to incorporate this work in future menu planning. A decision was also made to only source English apples when in season. Good Food on the Public Plate really enjoys working with Enfield who despite pressured schedules continues to look for ways to improve the sustainability of their catering operation.  

Room for growth?

Does your organisation own empty, bare land that’s not being used for anything? No matter how small it is it could be transformed into a space to grow fruit or vegetables.  Public sector organisations across London – local authorities, schools, care facilities, hospitals etc are already working with their staff and communities to turn underused areas into food growing spaces.

Capital Growth is a project coordinated by London Food Link to help Londoners transform the capital by creating 2,012 new food growing spaces by 2012.The Capital Growth campaign offers practical support to organisations and communities around London, helping people get access to land and create flourishing food growing spaces. 

If you’re interested and want to know more call the Capital Growth team 0207 837 1228 or click here for a list of the benefits of being part of the Capital Growth scheme  http://www.capitalgrowth.org/big_idea/benefits/

London Food Link

London Food Link and its members aim to increasing the availability of sustainable food in London; tackle the barriers preventing access to healthy and sustainable food for all Londoners; and protect and celebrate London's diverse food culture. Sustain’s

London Food Link runs a network of organisations and individuals who care about sustainable food. The diverse membership includes public sector organisations, farmers and food writers, caterers and community food projects.

London Food Link members receive a number of benefits including access to the lively e-forum – where you can share ideas, information about events, suppliers and training. You will also be invited to attend informal networking events in order to keep up to date with sustainable food goings-on in London.

If you are interested in becoming a member download the membership form http://www.sustainweb.org/pdf/LFL_Membership_Form_09.doc or for more information, contact Polly Higginson polly@sustainweb.org or 0207 837 1228 http://www.sustainweb.org/londonfoodlink/

Cater Link wins Soil Association Food for Life Catering Mark

Cater Link, the education arm of BaxterStorey, who provide the catering at Camden’s catering schools, has become the first contract caterer to be awarded a Food for Life Catering Mark by the Soil Association. The Food for Life Catering Mark at Bronze level was awarded to Cater Link for its healthy and climate friendly menu offer in more than 100 primary schools across Islington and Camden. Neil Fuller, Cater Link managing director, said "We are absolutely delighted to have been the first contract caterer to be awarded this prestigious accolade from the Soil Association.

Tender News

As part of our work we have been collecting a list of public sector contracts. Below are some from around the south east and London that come up in the next 12 months:

Organisation-Contract

If you see any opportunities presented here please get in touch with the contracting organisation directly or if you would like some assistance in how to approach them give us at Good Food on the Public Plate a call, 0207 837 1228.

You may also wish to sign up to Provenance, a new food supply and sustainability consultancy that has recently launched the first free email alert service for the latest contracts for supply of food to public sector bodies in the UK. Sign up for a daily or weekly email at http://provenancesupply.co.uk/services/public-sector-supply/alerts/

London food hero honoured

Mike Duckett, Catering Services Manager at the Royal Brompton Hospital, Chelsea and champion of local, sustainable food has received an MBE in the Queens’ Birthday Honours List for services to the NHS.

Mike has been catering manager at the hospital since 2001 but has worked in catering for the NHS for 40 years.   Mike was amongst the first people to recognise the benefits – to patients, staff and his budget - of using local, seasonal and organic produce and now over 25% of the food purchased by the hospital is purchased from sustainable farms and suppliers in the Home Counties. 

Organic hospitals – is Britain next?

Virgen de las Nieves in Granada, is the first Spanish hospital to get organic certification. The university hospital uses organic products in their patients menu and has adapted their facilities to the EC Regulation on organic production and labelling of organic products. The hospital is using organic food as a way to promote healthy habits among patients, to develop sustainable practices and support the Andalusian organic sector. Good Food on the Plate is wondering; is the UK ready for its first organic hospital?

Local food for schools

School Food Matters (SFM) continues its quest to get local produce into London schools and to teach children where their food comes from.  Over 60% of head teachers, from Richmond schools using the borough contract, have signed up to SFM’s goals.  This includes a call for the local authority to write stringent contract specifications for the next school meals tender document (due 2011), committing to fresh produce from local and sustainable sources.  Heads also support SFM’s call for the local authority to promote farm visits and cooking and growing programmes in schools to support food education.

SFM recently launched a parent petition and with over 450 signatures already, it appears that the parents want local food in school too.  ‘Now the issue is finding more local farmers who want to supply the schools’ says Stephanie Wood, coordinator of SFM. ‘Supplying schools represents a steady, reliable income for farmers. We know the paperwork involved can seem daunting but there’s a lot of help available for example from David Rose at Sustain, who’s also a farmer with first hand experience of supplying schools’.

Go to http://www.schoolfoodmatters.com/ for more info about SFM or contact david@sustainweb.org 0207 837 1228 for an informal chat about how to get involved with supplying schools.  

Good Food on the Public Plate Project officers

We now have four project officers available to help you find and use more sustainable food:
Jon Walker jon@sustainweb.org
David Rose david@sustainweb.org
Kena Duignan kena@sustainweb.org
And Rosie Blackburn, who will be familiar to a lot of you as she used to work on Good Food on the Public Plate and has come back to join us part time
rosie@sustainweb.org
 
To be added to, or removed from this mailing list please contact kena@sustainweb.org.

Dates for your Diary

Good Food Training for London are hosting another two exciting training events for public sector cooks and catering managers! 

'Raising Your Pulses’
Thursday 15th October
Hackney, East London.

Professional vegetarian chef Lucille Glenn and Indian cookery guru Cyrus Todiwala will demonstrate creative ways with beans, pulses and nuts to give your customers tasty, healthy and environmentally-friendly sources of protein. 

'Greens With Envy'
Tuesday 27th October
Hackney, East London.

Christina Tilbury, head of the Vegetarian Society’s Cordon Vert cookery school, will lead a hands-on class of modern vegetarian cookery - with no grated cheddar in sight!
 
For both events, a qualified nutritionist will be on hand to discuss the nutritional implications of all the dishes, and a complementary lunch will demonstrate the delicious results!
 
If you would like any further information about the two events, the guest trainers and booking details, please see: www.sustainweb.org/goodfoodtraining/

Good Food on the Public Plate Awards
Monday 16th November
City Hall, Southwark

The Good Food on the Public Plate (GFPP) project team are currently planning an awards event to take place at City Hall on 16 November 2009. The awards will be hosted and chaired by Rosie Boycott, chair of the London Food Board.  

The audience, including chief executives from London local authorities and MPs and civil servants with an interest in sustainable public procurement will see awards handed to public sector organisations from across London who have worked with the project in the past year and made significant changes to their catering and or supply chain.  The awards will hopefully become an annual event and, at the end of this year’s awards, all the public sector organisations who are not currently actively working to make their catering more sustainable, will be challenged to enter the awards next year – with the free of charge support of the GFPP team if required.

Please note, due to limited room, attendance at the event is by invitation only.


South East Food Group Partnership is planning some events for the next 6 months which you may be interested in. The dates for these events are:

For information and to book your place contact Penny Beauchamp at the South East Food Group Partnership penny@sefgp.co.uk

May 2009

Contracts: A fresh look
Free training on contract writing for sustainability

Many participants in Good Food on the Public Plate have told us that they want to know more about how to get the most out of their contracts in terms of sustainable food. In response we are delighted to announce that we are running a contract management training day.  This is fully-funded for catering and procurement managers in London's hospitals, schools, universities, and other public sector organisations and is therefore free of charge.

'Contracts: A Fresh Look' will be held on Thursday 18th June 2009 at a venue close to City Hall, in Central London.
Public sector procurement professionals will talk you through the accreditations, specifications and legislation they employ, to make sure their contracts provide the healthy, local, seasonal and ethical food they and their customers want.

Good Food on the Public Plate and Good Food Training for London have teamed up to bring you this exciting and important skills training event. We've kept the class sizes small so you can get the most out of our time - but this does mean we'll have to allocate places on a first come, first served basis.
 
More information and booking details can be found at www.sustainweb.org/goodfoodtraining/.  Any queries, please contact Pamela Brunton  or Kena Duignan on 0207 837 1228.
 

Government Office for London Mapping Report

Sustain has recently worked with Government Office for London to map the current state of play in public sector procurement of sustainable food in London.  Some of you may have provided details of your activities to our project officers - thank-you if you did!  Part of the mapping was to identify suppliers with the appropriate accreditations and the desire to supply London's public sector with sustainably produced products.  These producers' details have now been made available on the Good Food on the Public Plate website: http://www.sustainweb.org/goodfoodpublicplate/public_procurement_mapping/

Another part of the research was identifying contracts which are due for renewal in the next few years. Some of these which are coming up soon are:

If you see any opportunities presented here please contact the contracting organisation directly or Good Food on the Public Plate officers if you would like some assistance in how to approach them.


Participant profile - Imperial College

Imperial College London is showing strong leadership in the area of sustainable catering.  They are members of the Good Food on the Public Plates "Chelsea Cluster" of organisations working together to improve the sustainability of their catering.  The cluster is working to procure high welfare, regional meat and is beginning to look at their fruit and vegetable purchasing. As the largest member of the cluster, Imperial College is taking an active part in sharing their purchasing power and procurement expertise with the other members.  The standard of the catering operations is already high at Imperial College.  Head of Catering and Conferencing, Jane Neary, recently won the Cost Sector Caterer of the Year Award for the University/College category and the Imperial chefs won the gold award at The University Caterers Organisation (TUCO) Chefs' Challenge this year.

But Imperial is not resting on its laurels! Purchasing local and free range eggs is high on their agenda and the university is currently in the final stages of making this switch.  Because of this commitment, they received a Good Egg award from Compassion in World Farming last week.  Imperial College also recently hosted a local Freedom Food chicken supplier to see their operations and start building relationships for potential future supply. Sustainable fish is also an area of concern so they are testing replacing cod with pollack in their fish and chips option on Fridays. They are finding that their sales remain high and are continuing to use pollack.  They are also working on phasing out bottled water by installing water filters on their tap water, and are a Fairtrade-accredited University, using and promoting Fairtrade products wherever possible. 


Department of Health Sustainable Food Guide

The Department of Health has just published a guide for hospitals on why and how to purchase sustainable food.  We, at Good Food on the Public Plate, think this document is a great starting point for hospitals, and other public sector institutions, who want to look at the sustainability of their food systems.  The document Sustainable Food - a Guide for Hospitals is available on the Purchasing and Supply Agency website at: http://www.pasa.nhs.uk/pasa/Doc.aspx?Path=[MN][SP]/NHSprocurement/Sustainable%20procurement/Food/SustainableFoodGuide%20-%206may09.pdf


Tell us what you think

Good Food on the Public Plate has been running in its new phase since November 2008.  Since then we have been working with a wide range of organisations and have run a small number of events, such as Meet the Buyer at the International Food Exhibition on 17th of March.  We are planning more events for the coming year and so would like your feedback.  For example, did you miss an event and you would like us to run it again?  Is there any advice or help you need, that we haven't yet covered in a training event?