Nutritious lunch revolution drives food safety and rural livelihoods; industry players hope for parental support
Text by Upstream and Downstream reporters Lai Yu-wei and Tsai Chia-shan
The Council of Agriculture has announced that starting from academic year 106, school lunches will give priority to domestic safe ingredients bearing the "Four Labels and One Q." The policy is about to launch, but where can "Four Labels and One Q" ingredients be found? How should group meal contracts be signed? With signing only three or four months away, parents, schools and group meal operators still seem to have reached no consensus.
The related supporting measures must be drawn up without delay. Yesterday (the 19th), the National Alliance of Parents' Associations specially invited parent association representatives from schools at all levels, education bureau officials, Agriculture and Food Agency officials and meal box operators to jointly discuss the difficulties and solutions for implementing "Four Labels and One Q" school lunches; the Council of Agriculture also held a food safety forum that day on how to concretely implement the policy of safe ingredients in school lunches.
Operators up in arms: Buying ingredients from legally announced manufacturers, yet still testing positive for pesticide residues!
"The contracts we sign with schools now are really unreasonable!" Group meal and meal box operators are crying out in distress. Yao Tien-fu, chairman of Yuan Li Xiang Bento, and Wang Pai-ching, chief executive of Hsin Hsin Group Meals, both pointed out that they had already purchased ingredients from legally announced manufacturers, and even bought CAS eggs, "but when the health bureau came to the school for random testing, our ingredients still tested positive for pesticide and veterinary drug residues." And according to the contracts originally signed with the schools, lunch operators would be fined between 20,000 and 40,000 yuan.
At this point, Wang Pai-ching was so angry he was jumping up and down. "We originally thought CAS agricultural products were a guarantee, but in the end there were still problems!" When certified agricultural products have problems, lunch operators not only face fines, but even have to deal with meal suspension and loss of consumer trust.
"If certified agricultural products have problems, shouldn't the upstream farmers be fined? How can I, an operator who buys stock according to the rules, be made to bear it all!" Wang Pai-ching called this unreasonable; Yao Tien-fu also stressed that the government should provide or designate some safe ingredients so that manufacturers know which ingredients can be used with confidence. "Don't have the government ignore everything and instead make manufacturers and operators bear the risk."
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