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Question from: County Councillor Amanda Jenner Subject: Greater use and provision of local produce in school meals
Question:
Powys CC Twitter Account recently stated: “Nearly 10% of the Powys workforce is in the agriculture industry, farming over 80% of the county’s land. It has never been more important to support the local farming industry #SupportLocalPowys #FarmtoFork”.
What can the Council do to encourage greater use and provision of local produce in school meals?
Minutes: Response by the Portfolio Holder:
We do use local suppliers within Powys to provide products for school meals, Radnor Hills, Langford’s of Welshpool for sausages and Holdsworth Food Services in Crickhowell is our distributor.
In terms of using locally sourced produce we would very much like to work with our local farming community to provide us with locally sourced produce. All food produce must meet the WG Healthy Eating standards and all food suppliers must be STS audited under current procurement rules, this is a requirement following the Pennington report after the Ecoli 0157 outbreak in South Wales in 2005.
School compliant produce must be affordable to us so that we can keep value for money to parents in terms of school meal prices, but also affordable that we can cover our costs.
Local farming representatives have recently contacted our Council Leader with a similar question. We are more than happy to engage with local suppliers but this will have to be through our commercial services team and also any local supplier would have to be set up on our food framework which is now operated via Caerphilly County Borough Council.
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