Parent Symposium on Campus Lunch Ingredient Safety Held
On the eve of the new school semester (8/30), the Taichung Chapter of the Homemakers United Foundation held a Parent Forum on Campus Lunch Ingredient Safety, bringing together parents of elementary and middle school students concerned about food safety issues at their children's schools to jointly understand the current situation and difficulties of campus lunches, hoping that at the class parent meetings at the start of the semester they can raise questions about the current campus lunch ingredient safety issues, including: pesticide residues, demands to use non-genetically modified foods, and whether the proportion of processed foods is too high... and other issues. In addition, the Homemakers United Foundation also encourages parents to go online to view the lunch information provided by schools and the Health Bureau, so as to understand whether their children's lunch ingredients are up to standard, and even, as parent volunteers or parent committee members, to cooperate with schools in campus lunch work meetings to raise the safety and quality of ingredients.
The forum invited Hsu En-lin, lunch secretary of Xinshe High School, Sun Pei-chun, a volunteer mother with a dietitian background, and Chen Li-mei, former principal of Chang-an Elementary School, to share their practical observations on running school lunches. In addition, the second stage of the forum was experience sharing by parents from the north, central, and south. Keelung parent Chang Ming-li and Kaohsiung parent Liu Hui-wen used VCRs to share their journeys of joining parent committees and getting genetically modified soybean products removed from campus lunches. Dali Elementary School parent Huang Chun-yen shared, from the perspective of a tasting volunteer, the protection that campus parents' concern about lunch ingredient preparation gives children. Zhongzheng Elementary School parent Hsu Hsin-hsin shared her experience of participating in kitchen supervision and lunch meetings, while Xinyi Elementary School parent Keng Ming-yi explained in writing the situations she observed while serving as a parent committee member and participating in lunch work meetings, and on that basis organized five directions in which parents could suggest schools make adjustments. In addition to parents concerned about their children's lunches, representatives from the Health Bureau, the Education Bureau, the Taichung County and City Meal Box Associations, and industry representatives also attended the forum.
First, Deputy Director Chang Ming-chun, the Foundation's representative on the Taichung City School Lunch Health Promotion Committee, reported on the issues in current campus lunch ingredients that most worry homemakers, including: pesticide residues in fruits and vegetables, genetically modified feed soybeans, and concerns about quality caused by frozen lunch prices... and affirmed that the city government adopted the Homemakers United Foundation's suggestions and increased the items and quantities of campus lunch ingredients sampled this year.
Retired principal Chen Li-mei, Xinshe High School lunch secretary Hsu En-lin, and Sun Pei-chun, who once worked as a group meal dietitian, shared from practical lunch experience exactly which aspects of campus meals cause concern and which practical links are the important crux of the problem. Chen Li-mei emphasized that principals worry most about failed tenders making meal service impossible, while vendors fear most losing money. Campus lunches are now in this predicament. When she retired 3 years ago, one meal cost 41 yuan, and now it is still 41 yuan; while the prices of everything rise together, only the lunch price does not rise, and even if quality is poor, for this reason one cannot harshly criticize vendors. In addition, she does not support making lunches completely free, since after all, parents who can afford more should bear a bit more; making lunch policy more perfect is the result of the common good of society, while making it completely free would only crowd out other education budgets.
Hsu En-lin said that in her fourth year as lunch secretary, she was already a "veteran" in the greater Taichung lunch secretary circle, which shows that the turnover rate of lunch secretaries is quite high. Currently, only schools with more than 40 classes have a dietitian; lunch duties at schools with 40 classes or fewer are handled by the lunch secretary. Lunch secretaries are mostly teachers or administrative staff who take turns serving concurrently. Rarely full-time, it is hard to be professional, because if one truly wants to handle lunch duties seriously, just the monthly menu alone takes two days to review. Once class duties and lunch administrative duties cannot be given equal weight, teachers inevitably put their focus on class duties.
At Xinshe High School, because the school valued her home economics expertise, she was assigned to focus on handling lunch duties. Even so, she also revealed that when she first took the post she was unfamiliar with the work and the tender was imminent, so the contents of the tender contract could only follow the previous year's version. Later, as she gradually came to realize that hygiene and safety were most important, she successively added requirements to the contract for vendors to supply organic vegetables and non-genetically modified soy products.
Hsu En-lin emphasized that campus lunches need parents' concern, and without supervision it is hard to improve; the school's ability to supervise kitchens, inspect and accept ingredients, and conduct sampling is very important, and only professional knowledge and long-term investment can raise quality at the key points in the process. In addition, campus lunch prices should be relaxed; frozen prices have clearly reduced meat portions, and currently the Education Bureau provides full subsidies for disadvantaged students, so parents who can afford it should let their children eat better; otherwise, if vendors cannot cover costs and pass off inferior goods as good or switch to cheaper ingredients, it is not good for the children.
Sun Pei-chun, sharing from the dual identity of former group meal dietitian and parent, pointed out that Taichung's campus lunches have already reached above-standard levels in nutrition, and she hoped quality could rise another level. She used the food cloud system launched in May of this year to introduce the "secrets in the menu," hoping parents would pay attention to the use of seasonings in lunch menus, for example: bone powder and chicken powder, which both add flavor but contain quite a few food additives, harmful and not beneficial to children's health. In addition, parents can use the group meal login system to find their children's school lunch menus, ingredient types, and upstream vendor information. Sun Pei-chun revealed that when the food cloud was launched, upstream vendors, upon learning they had to enter ingredient data, asked whether they would be sampled and inspected. This shows vendors are very afraid of sampling, so she affirmed the Homemakers United Foundation's request that the Health Bureau increase the number of sampled items, and emphasized that only by relaxing prices and having the government strictly gatekeep can the important goal of quality improvement be achieved.
The first stage of practical dialogue invited Xinshe High School lunch secretary Hsu En-lin, volunteer mother with a dietitian background Sun Pei-chun, and former Chang-an Elementary School principal Chen Li-mei to share. Participants understood that if schools insist on letting children eat with peace of mind, then when vendors have reasonable profits, they too will provide safe food through various means, for example: through contract farming with farmers letting children eat safe vegetables, choosing non-genetically modified foods, reducing the proportion of processed foods... and so on.
In the second stage, "Sharing of Parent Action Participation," a VCR first shared the journey of Keelung parent Chang Ming-li and Kaohsiung parent Liu Hui-wen in joining parent committees and getting genetically modified soybean products removed from campus lunches. Then, in Taichung, the Foundation's chief secretary Hsu Hsin-hsin, whose child attends Zhongzheng Elementary School, Dali Elementary School parent Huang Chun-yen, and Xinyi Elementary School parent committee member Keng Ming-yi shared the situations they observed while participating in lunch preparation.
Kaohsiung parent Liu Hui-wen, in order to share her participation journey at the forum, recorded the video more than a hundred times, showing great dedication. She emphasized that she only volunteered to serve as a parent representative so that her child would not eat feed-grade genetically modified soybeans. She pointed out that when she raised the issue with the school, the school at first also balked because of price, but she asked the Homemakers United Foundation to assist, inviting a lecturer to communicate together with the principal, the chair of the parent committee, and the lunch secretary, and the school finally decided to switch to non-genetically modified soy products. Therefore she called on all parents, for the sake of their children, to enter the campus and speak up for their children, because only in this way can children's futures change!
Dali Elementary School parent Huang Chun-yen said that the lunch team volunteers visit the group meal company's kitchen at the start of the semester, and during the semester they also arrange rotating taste tests. This puts certain pressure on vendors; when tasting school lunches she paid special attention to processed products and fried items, and once found that curry, ketchup, and butter mostly had only color but not the flavor they should have! Huang Chun-yen emphasized that the more specific and numerous the opinions parents provide, the more vendors will take them seriously.
Zhongzheng Elementary School parent Hsu Hsin-hsin shared her experience of attending the end-of-term lunch meeting. Once she blocked a bid scoring plan to lower the weighting of ingredient quality items, and another time she suggested switching to non-GM soy products. Although the principal explained on the spot that it was hard to require vendors due to price issues, the school later verbally required vendors to switch to non-GM soy products on vegetarian days, showing that schools to some degree still take parents' suggestions seriously and try to improve. In the process of participating in kitchen supervision, she learned about and understood the relevant aspects, focused supervision on food safety, requested inspection reports to understand the ingredient sampling mechanism. She also suggested the school conduct its own ingredient sampling rather than relying entirely on vendor reports; this was later adopted by the school and changed to having the dietitian sample ingredients, which should put certain pressure on vendors and should help improve ingredient safety.
This forum, held for parents, aimed to promote exchange among parents concerned about campus lunches. Official representatives, including the Health Bureau and the Education Bureau, both attended, and the principals of Renmei and Dongxing Elementary Schools also came to learn. In addition, after the Taichung City Meal Box Association, which had recently visited the Foundation, learned of this forum, its secretary-general also attended, and Taichung County Meal Box Association Chairman Yang and Yixiang Company also sent representatives.
Yixiang's Director Peng said that the Health Bureau had recently convened group meal vendors for a meeting, setting cycles for self-inspection of various ingredients and raising requirements for vendors' self-management. However, estimating according to the Health Bureau's draft, this would add as much as 650,000 yuan in inspection costs each year. He expressed incomprehension at this approach, because vendors had already spent higher costs buying CAS ingredients, yet still had to send them for testing, which he called a waste of resources. It should require gatekeeping at the source, he said, and he threatened to withdraw from the Food Safety group meal certification, which has a lower standard than HACCP. In addition, Taichung's lunch prices have been frozen for many years, but costs for ingredients, oil, electricity, and personnel have all risen, and Taichung's lunch vendors have dropped from 17 to 5. Director Peng said that for the pesticide residue problem, since 101 they had used contract farming to provide safe vegetables, testing before harvest, but they had also been criticized for having only five kinds of vegetables.
Taichung County Meal Box Association Chairman Yang said that the Agriculture Bureau's source control is very important, while items subsidized by the city government actually force vendors to lose money doing them, such as fruit. If the subsidy of 6 yuan twice a week were changed to 12 yuan once every two weeks, it could provide good quality food that children love to eat and also avoid waste.
Finally, representatives of the Health Bureau and the Education Bureau responded in turn. The section chief of the Health Bureau's Food and Drug Section said that the failure rate of group meal ingredients is much lower than ordinary ones, and Education Bureau Section Chief Liu responded that he would bring the opinions back and promised strict gatekeeping.
Chang Ming-chun said that from her experience participating in the School Lunch Health Promotion Committee, she found the Agriculture Bureau to be the least active, causing poor source management. Although the Education Bureau said there is no explicit freeze on lunch prices, if schools want to raise them, the mayor requires principals to submit a written explanation. The Homemakers United Foundation has always stood on the side of children and also upheld environmental principles, and does not like to see children disliking fruits and vegetables causing ingredient waste. At the same time, the first campus lunch forum held in early May also emphasized that reasonable price increases are the only way to demand ingredient quality; otherwise, both schools and children are put in a difficult position. In addition, it specially clarified that the Homemakers United Foundation did not ask vendors to increase ingredient sampling; on the contrary, what the Homemakers United Foundation has always advocated is that the Health Bureau should increase the number of campus lunch ingredient samples, rather than shifting the public sector's gatekeeping responsibility onto vendors' operating costs, which would only increase children's food safety risks.
The event ended amid lively discussion. Representatives of all sides and parents all affirmed the Homemakers United Foundation's concern for children's right to food safety and its role as a platform between parents, vendors, and officials, and were also willing to consider the positions of all sides. In the concluding remarks, Director Hsieh Wen-chi and Deputy Director Chang Ming-chun of the Homemakers United Foundation Taichung Chapter both emphasized that letting children eat well and also understand the value of safe, good ingredients is the best form of education. Therefore, in addition to focusing on the campus lunch issue, the Homemakers United Foundation also promotes green food education through green picture books and lectures, letting children respect the land and cherish what they eat, hoping that with the concern and efforts of all sectors, our children can eat campus lunches with peace of mind and health.
Reported by Hsu Hsin-hsin / Lin Fang-ju