Date: 12 July 2007 20:26

LOCAL FOOD BACK ON THE MENU FOR CAMBRIDGESHIRE SCHOOL CHILDREN

 School dinners in Cambridgeshire contain more locally grown food than at 
any time in the past 20 years - thanks to a high-profile operation to track 
down fresh and prepared products from local suppliers.

 By autumn 2007 40% of the menu for the 250 primary and secondary schools 
served by Cambridgeshire Catering Services, Cambridgeshire County Council's 
catering team, will come from farms and food companies from the East of 
England and surrounding area. This is nearly twice the amount of the 
previous year (22%) and up from 17% in 2005.

Food is delivered either directly to the 140 schools that cook completely 
from scratch, or into the Cambridgeshire Catering Centre (C3), a cook-freeze 
facility that produces dishes cooked by traditional methods to the 110 
smaller schools that have limited kitchen facilities.

 Over the past three years, Hilary Witt, Head of CCS and her team have 
created a system whereby 21,000 children in most of the authority's primary 
and half its secondary schools have freshly prepared local food on a daily 
basis.

"We use traditional recipes and we cook in a traditional way. We provide our 
schools with an affordable service for locally sourced meals, delivered to 
the children with consistent quality," she said.

 Marie Francis, Food and Farming Champion for the East of England, said: 
"This region has a huge variety of fine local produce. What has been 
achieved in Cambridgeshire is an excellent example to other local 
authorities. The children can enjoy tasty school dinners made from quality 
locally produced food. At the same time their carbon footprint is smaller 
than most because the number of miles the food on their plates has travelled 
is as low as possible."

According to Tully Wakeman, Director of East Anglia Food Link, local 
education authorities in Norfolk, Hertfordshire, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire 
are sourcing a total of around £1.3m of local and sustainable products every 
year for their schools.

John Reynolds