Bridging the Gap: with public sector food

Chair

Ruth Westcott, Sustain, Climate and Nature Campaign Manager

Ruth manages Sustain's work on the Climate and Nature Emergency, working to make food a central part of policies to tackle the climate and nature emergency at a local and national level. Ruth has led campaigns at Sustain for over seven years, joining from the Marine Stewardship Council.  

Speakers

Ander Zabala, London Borough of Hackney, Sustainability and Climate Manager

Ander is the Sustainability and Climate Service Group Manager, leading on the consumption-based emissions theme in the Hackney Climate Action Plan, which includes sustainable food diets. Ander is aiming to get boroughs to join the Eat Like a Londoner campaign and the London Food Purchasing Commitment to encourage more plant-based meals across our catering contracts, whether it is from schools, children centres or canteens. 

Edward Morgan, Castell Howell Food, Group Corporate Social Responsibility & Training Manager

Born and raised on a farm in West Wales, Edwards’s career has been exclusively in the food sector. Edwards leads Castell Howell Foods supply chain projects focussing on sustainability and measuring their impact across the supply chain. Public sector catering is approximately. 22% of Castell Howell’s total sales, supplying all NHS Wales hospitals, many in England and 1000 schools across Wales, helping to provide ingredients for an estimated 600,000 school meals weekly.  

Sarah Gowanlock, Soil Association Food For Life Scotland, Patnerships Manager

Sarah Gowanlock is a Partnerships Manager with Food for Life Scotland, a Soil Association programme funded by Scottish Government.  Through her role, Sarah builds and maintains supportive partnerships across the food systems sector in Scotland, working closely with strategic stakeholders to embed the Food for Life approach wherever possible to drive positive change. Sarah has worked as part of the Food for Life Scotland team since 2018, which supports local authorities and other public sector settings to achieve the Food for Life Served Here award, a catering framework for serving fresh, local and sustainable meals.

About

In this webinar we will be talking about public institutions using public money to buy food; think schools, hospitals and council run care homes. Sustain and its alliance of food sector organisations have been campaigning for public institutions to invest the public’s money in food for public good. The potential for better health and environmental outcomes is huge given that £2.4 billion is spent purchasing food and catering services by public institutions every year.

Our work is to show why we must bridge the price gap between conventionally produced and climate and nature friendly fruit and veg. The case needs to be built that the public good of change is imperative if we are to meet our health, social and environmental commitments.