New Taipei City group meal caterers follow suit: an extra five yuan is enough to supply non-GMO soy products for school lunches
The Taipei City Meal Box Food Commercial Trade Association resolved last month that as long as school lunch prices rise by 5 yuan, non-GMO soy products can be supplied across the board. New Taipei City school lunch caterers followed suit yesterday, formally issuing documents to local education bureaus and schools, following the Taipei City precedent, hoping to raise each meal by 5 yuan so that operators can switch to non-GMO soy products, possibly starting as early as the new semester in September, with nearly 80 percent of students expected to benefit.
Liu Xiaojing, a dietitian at the New Taipei City Meal Box Food Commercial Trade Association, said that at last week's membership meeting, all 13 members passed the decision. Currently, about 350,000 students in New Taipei City eat school lunch each day, including elementary, junior high and some senior high students, of whom more than 276,000 are supplied by school lunch caterers. Non-GMO soybeans cost 30 to 50 percent more, so each meal needs to rise by 5 yuan to reflect the cost.
Liu Xiaojing said the association has in fact discussed this issue before. In recent years parents and teachers have been very concerned about GMO issues, repeatedly asking operators whether they could supply non-GMO soybeans, but the average amount per meal in New Taipei City is only about 45 yuan, and about 50 yuan in the Zhongyonghe area, while all kinds of costs keep rising, so the request really could not be agreed to. It happened that Taipei City school lunch caterers raised this issue, so the association decided to work on it together, but if schools do not raise prices, there is nothing operators can do.
Taipei City school lunch caterers plan to order jointly, buying American non-GMO soybeans uniformly from Fwusow Industry Co., Ltd., and then commissioning the Public Health Development Center to audit them. Non-GMO products entering campuses must first undergo review, contracting, traceability and process visits, with inspection reports published every quarter. New Taipei City's soybean source is the same as Taipei City's, and it has already coordinated with the Taipei City association; in the future they will purchase and audit jointly to avoid wasting resources and to spend the money on ingredients.
New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu previously said in a media interview that the school lunch price had already been raised last year, and there were no plans to adjust it for now. Huang Jialin, a member of "Non-GMO School Lunch," called on the city government to follow the example of organic school lunches and subsidize non-GMO soy products for children from low-income families and remote areas, with the rest borne by parents.
He also called on parents to spend 5 yuan more per meal, which can give children better food, life and environmental education. GMO soybean companies exploit farmers in Central and South America. Recently the International Agency for Research on Cancer under the World Health Organization upgraded the cancer risk classification of the herbicide Roundup, and Roundup is the pesticide most commonly used on GMO soybeans. Letting children eat non-GMO soybeans is also a way of caring about the health of farmers who grow them.