Taoyuan Moves Toward a GMO-Free City, Promoting Healthy and Sustainable Food Education
[20150409 Press Release]
Hoping Taoyuan becomes a "GMO-free" city Soaring toward a healthy and sustainable dream of food education
Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan at a recent (4/8) municipal meeting instructed that starting from the new school year in September, the "Safe Ingredients Every Day for School Nutritional Lunches" policy be implemented, subsidizing NT$5 per student per week for ingredient costs, providing organic vegetables three days a week, GAP (Good Agricultural Practice) certified produce one day a week, and non-genetically modified ingredients one day a week. The "GMO-free School Lunches" action team believes that this move is a positive response to the 100-day progress recommendations for GMO-free school lunches in the six special municipalities that we put forward, and also represents the first step toward the pre-election promise of a GMO-free policy. Although Taoyuan City has only proposed a weekly subsidy of NT$5, which is only one-fifth of Taichung City's policy of subsidizing NT$5 per person per meal, we are glad to see that Mayor Cheng is not offering a formulaic "encouragement" but has put forward a concrete plan for a GMO-free lunch one day a week. This specific action shows that it is not a perfunctory matter and deserves encouragement and recognition.
In order to safeguard schoolchildren's dietary safety through the school lunch subsidy policy, it is known from media reports that this will increase annual expenditure by approximately NT$43 million. In this regard, we respectfully offer the practices of other counties and cities for the reference of Mayor Cheng's administrative team. Miaoli County and Hsinchu County, neighboring Taoyuan City, currently provide free school lunches across the board. However, the Miaoli County Government recently conducted a questionnaire survey of parents countywide and reached a first-stage consensus on raising the fee to NT$40 per meal; the second stage will involve consolidating opinions on cost-sharing between the county government and parents. Hsinchu County is also planning a parent questionnaire survey to ask about the possibility of increasing funding to implement the provision of GMO-free and locally sourced ingredients. In addition, although Taipei City Mayor Ko Wen-je has ruled that each school may raise prices by up to NT$10 to improve lunch quality, Taipei City group meal operators have already stated that as long as each person pays NT$5 more per meal, they can provide GMO-free soybeans and corn across the board; it is understood that operators in New Taipei City have also begun planning to follow suit.
Allow us to offer Mayor Cheng the following suggestions for consideration:
1. Completely abandon GM ingredients. Under limited funding, adjust the menu so that, for example, non-GM soybean and corn products are used only one day, while on other serving days ingredients of comparable nutritional value are used instead, without GM components.
2. Without changing the menu, first calculate the cost of switching all serving days to non-GM ingredients, and widely distribute explanations and questionnaire surveys to parents to canvass their willingness to bear the increased cost, with the city government focusing subsidies on the lunch costs of students from low-income families, so as to achieve the ultimate goal of a GMO-free school campus.
In addition, we also express our gratification at Mayor Cheng's directive tasking the Department of Public Health with guiding operators in the Daxi dried tofu industry to use "non-genetically modified ingredients" as a branding and marketing feature.
The GMO-free School Lunches action team in January of this year published an op-ed in the media calling for the comprehensive use of non-GM soybean raw materials to restore the reputation of Daxi dried tofu; in February we expressed our views through the Taoyuan City government mailbox and received a positive reply from the city government that it would encourage operators to use non-GM raw materials; at the same time, on Facebook we launched the "Indefinite Support for Daxi Dried Tofu Using Non-GM Soybeans" petition campaign, which received support from more than a thousand netizens. We believe that non-GM Daxi dried tofu can be combined with the revival of domestic coarse grain cultivation, promote sustainable agriculture and industry, and provide consumers with safe and reassuring food. Furthermore, through an industrial zone, certification marks, and traceability mechanisms from the production end to the consumption end, non-GM Daxi dried tofu can become a brand differentiator and is the best path to sustainable operation.
In recent years, food safety incidents in Taiwan have emerged one after another, and how to restore public confidence in food and drink is an urgent task for central agencies and local governments alike. We hope that Mayor Cheng can implement the spirit of the non-GM ingredient policy, build Taoyuan into a "GMO-free city," and lead the people of Taiwan in sailing together toward a healthy and sustainable dream of food education.
[Press Contacts]
Huang Jialin, Chen Ruwei / Co-founders of the GMO-free School Lunches action team
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