Quality for All

Qualityforall

Schoolmealsandsustainabledevelopment inRome

Roberta Sonnino,Schoolof Cityand Regional Planning CardiffUniversity

Explains the process through which Rome has revolutionised its school meals system to identify strategies and values that are responsible for its astonishing success. The story presented here shows that the successful implementation of a healthy school meals system depends mostly, if not exclusively, on a strong, shared and tenacious commitment to the values and ideals of sustainable development.

Introduction

As I was watching the dinner ladies preparing lunch of pasta with tomato sauce, baked meatballs, mixed salad and seasonal fruit in an ordinary Roman school kitchen in November 2005, my mind was making connections between the consumers and the producers of the meal. Gathered around colourful dinner tables in the adjacent canteen, the consumers included a group of primary school children and their teachers, waiting all together to be served. In Rome, the Councillor for Education had told me the day before, school meals are considered to be“an integral part of the school’s curriculum and of a wider educational project”. For this reason, teachers are expected to have lunch with their pupils, showing them how to use the silverware, helping the youngest to peel the fruit and encouraging them to try new dishes.

This chapter is based on the analysis of materials provided by the Department for School and Educational Policies and of formal and informal interviews conducted with all the key players involved in the process.

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The producers of that meal, on the other hand, included a very diversiﬁed group of farmers, scattered around the world, who share one fundamental thing in common: they are all, by and large, ‘non-conventional’. Two hours before lunch, all school children in Romehad been distributed, as mid-morning snack, a small Fair Trade chocolate bar from Latin America. For the meatballs, the dinner ladies had utilised Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) lamb from Wales. Fruit and vegetables, all fresh and organically-produced, had been sourced around Italyfrom a variety of suppliers. Amongst them, there was also the Capodarco community I had visited the day before. Located 30 kilometres from Rome, Capodarco is a social co-operative of ex-criminals and drug addicts who have become involved in the production and direct sale of organic foods.

After ﬁnishing their meal, children were invited to dispose of their leftovers, which the City of Romedestines to its animal shelters. While watching the kids queuing up behind the bins, I began wondering when their much more unfortunate counterparts from other countries will be granted the same right to Healthy Eating and informed consumption.

Creatingsustainability: schoolmealsandthequalityturninRome

In Italy, local authorities interested in devising Healthy Eating policies can rely upon a friendly legislative context. In 1999, the centre-left Italian government issued a law (N. 488) that explicitly encourages public institutions that manage school and hospital canteens to utilise organic, typical, traditional and certiﬁed products and to prioritise quality in their food procurement initiatives1. In the same year, DPR 128/1999, whichtransposed into national legislation the EU directives on the marketing of foods for infants and children, established that “special attention must be paid to the conservation, freshness and absence of harmful substances in the ingredients utilised”. Together, these legislative initiatives have widely promoted the use of ‘quality’ (particularly organic) foods in the Italian public canteens, especially in the schools.

Shortly after these two laws were issued, Rome, which was at the time governed by an administration led by a Green Mayor, became interested in the potential of green food procurement. However, it became immediately evident that the operation was destined to face enormous practical difﬁculties. As the Director of the Education Department explained, the organic market at the time was very ‘patchy’ and unable to guarantee the continuity of supply needed

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by a City that feeds 140,000 school children every day for 190 days a year.

Two strategies were crucial to trigger the process of change in the school meal system. First, the City revolutionised its tendering procedures, shifting from a system that traditionally invited only a few, selected companies to respond to the call for tender to one that opened the competition to allsuppliers interested in participating. As expected, the new system signiﬁcantly broadened the range of products and services on offer. Second, Rome’s authorities introduced new award criteria that aimed to enhance the social and environmental sustainability of the school meal service. As in the UK, the contracts were awarded on the basis of the “economically most advantageous tender”; however, in contrast with the UK, this principle was not interpreted in terms of cutting costs2. Quite the contrary, it was based on the internalization of socio-environmental costs; in other words, it implied balancing an attention to allcosts of the service with an emphasis on quality that ultimately stimulated the tendering companies to develop their creativity and their planning skills.

Speciﬁcally, the 2002 to 2004 tender identiﬁed a number of criteria that aimed to guarantee the basic quality of the service. For example, GM foods and frozen vegetables (with the exception of peas, green beans and spinach) were forbidden and it was established that the meals had to be balanced in terms of nutritional and caloric intake and that fruit and vegetables utilised had to be fresh, seasonal and organic. At the same time, however, the tender attempted to stimulate bidders to further develop the socio-environmental quality of the products and services offered through the development of innovative award criteria. Contracts were based on a 100 point award system in which the price of the meal accounted for 51 points; the remaining points rewarded changes towards the sustainability of the service. In particular, 30 points were awarded to the “organisational characteristics” of the service proposed (e.g. the number of staff and working hours, the environmental certiﬁcations possessed by companies, the environmental friendliness of the transportation system organised); another 15 points were awarded for “projects, interventions and services” proposed to reduce acoustic pollution in the school canteens and to promote food education amongst the users of the service; the ﬁnal four points were allocated to tendering companies capable of supplying additional organic food products3.

This award system was a real winning strategy in the Roman quality revolution. It delegated to the contracted companies the responsibility of improving the environment of the food canteens; it encouraged them to broaden the range of social and environmental services offered; itstimulated the organic food market, leading

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suppliers to add olive oil, mozzarella, yoghurt, veal, chicken, turkey and ham to the list of organic products requested by the tender (i.e. fruit and vegetables). Most important, this incentive system created a new set of quality standards that have progressively conquered and involved all actors in the food chain. As the Director of the Education Department stated in an interview, “It created so much cultural awareness that everybody has now understood that we have reached a stage of non-return and that quality will never be sacriﬁced again”.

Allforquality:thedevelopmentofthe Romanschoolmealsmodel

The year 2004 marked the beginning of a new stage in the Roman school meal revolution. Despite the efforts made by many Italian cities and municipalities to promote Healthy Eating habits through school meals, data provided by the National Institute for Research on Food and Nutrition showed that between 2000 and 2002, 24% of Italian children under the age of ten were overweight and 11% were obese.

Under the slogan ‘all for quality’, Romeidentiﬁed children’s health and security as the paramount priority for the 2004 to 2007 tender4. It was established that only the healthiest food products available on the market can be utilised in the school kitchens and that the amount of animal proteins contained in the food must be reduced. The weight of the dishes to be served at lunch is clearly speciﬁed in the tender, which also deﬁnes the modalities to be adopted by the managers of the service with regard to the conservation, handling, cooking and distribution of the food.

To prevent childhood obesity, the tender forbids pasta seconds; moreover, contracted companies are required to diversify their menus on the basis of children’s age and to adopt the recipes (including the speciﬁed amount of ingredients) written by a team of nutritionists. Healthy mid-morning snacks (such as fruit tarts, bananas and bread rolls) became mandatory to discourage children from bringing their own (and often too high calorie) snacks5.

Finally, the composition of the main meal was redesigned on the basis of four main quality principles:

Seasonality. The menus, which now have a summer and a winter version, are mostly based on the use of fresh ingredients.
Variety. To ensure an adequate intake of all necessary nutrients and to introduce children to different foods, no dish is to be served more than once every ﬁve weeks.
Tradition. Convinced by its nutritionists that the Mediterranean diet is the most effective in preventing pathologies related to food and nutrition, the City has decided to privilege traditional Italian recipes in the school menus.
Health. Following the guidelines provided by the Italian Institute of Nutrition, it was established that the midmorning snack must provide 8% to 10% of the daily nutritional intake, whereas the food served at lunch must contain 35% of the nutrients children need.

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In addition to emphasizing children’s health, the 2004 to 2007 tender also introduced new requirements and incentives to improve the sustainability of the Roman school meal service4. Speciﬁcally, the list of mandatory organic products expanded considerably to include also olive oil, tinned tomatoes, cheese, bread, baked products, legumes, cereals, pasta, rice, ﬂour, eggs and chocolate. As with the previous tender, food companies capable of offering additional organic products were awarded four points ~ an initiative that has recently led to the introduction of organic Parmigiano, mozzarella and butter in the Roman schools.

A major innovation in the new tender is represented by the promotion of products from ‘bio-dedicated’ food chains ~ foods that have been produced, processed, packaged and distributed by ﬁrms that operate exclusively in the organic sector. As one of the City’s procurement advisors explained, by awarding four points to companies that source these kind of products, Rome has not only re-emphasised the cultural values associated with the organic world; it has also promoted traceability and reduced the potential for contamination of organic products by conventionally produced foods. Finally, faced with children’s resistance to the toughness of organic meat, Romehas partially re-negotiated its interpretation of quality by requesting Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) and PGI meat, which often comes from ancient and extensively-reared breeds at risk of extinction. Again, suppliers capable of providing additional certiﬁed products could gain nine award points. In addition to supporting the market for Italian PGI meat and cured meats, this initiative has added French pork and Welsh lamb to the list of quality products served in the Roman schools.

To complete its qualityrevolution, the new tender has also intervened in the social sphere. Under the stated objective of preventing situations in which “the actions we perform to improve our local quality of life threaten the quality of life of people in other areas of the world or that of future generations”, the City now also rewards suppliers who provide Fair Trade products. Practically, this has brought 280,000 Fair Trade bananas and 140,000 Fair Trade chocolate bars into the Roman schools every week, providing a 20% increase in the national market for Fair Trade products. Moreover, a number of pilot schemes have been developed to enhance the social sustainability of the Roman school meal system. For example, a programme has been started in 12 schools to distribute unutilised foods (especially fruit and bread) to charity associations helping the poor; in a few other schools, the City is testing a type of pasta made with wheat grown by

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a social co-operative that works land conﬁscated from the maﬁa.

In sum, over the course of ﬁve years Romehas managed to design and progressively implement a school meal system that is concerned, at the same time, with consumers’ health, environmental protection and social inclusion. It is, in aword, a sustainable school meal system that reconnects, on a daily basis, producers and consumers on a scale never seen before.

Developmentas socialcohesion: the governancephilosophy behind theRomanschoolmealmodel

Unlike most other cities, Romeoperates within a legislative context that promotes, rather than frustrates, the implementation of sustainable forms of public food procurement. However, this consideration should not obfuscate the results achieved on the ground by a city that provides as many as 27 million school meals every year. As previously pointed out, Romehad to face signiﬁcant barriers to implement its quality revolution, including those presented by an alternative food market that was still too small and fragmented to guarantee a steady supply.

Crucial to the success of the Roman initiative was the development of a partnership between public and private sector. Conscious of the potential negative effects that a sudden and massive demand for niche products could have on the market, Rome’s authorities chose to operate gradually and to actively involve producers in their initiatives. In fact, the two tenders identiﬁed a number of award criteria that, on the one hand, served to stimulate the supply of quality products and services, while, on the other, helped consumers to understand and progressively adjust to the different foods introduced. In the process, producershave regularly been consulted and advised by city authorities. Although formally the system is privatised, contractors are required to comply with guidelines speciﬁed by the City. In this sense, the public sector remains in control of the quality of the service through a stringent monitoring system that involves a specialised contracted company, the local health authorities, the City’s nutritionists and, signiﬁcantly, the so-called ‘Canteen Commissions’, formed by parents. Unlike all other bodies involvedin this kind of operations, parents cannot sample the food, but they can verify that school cooks comply with the indications provided in the menu, they can check all labels and they can also provide feedback

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to the City about the aesthetic qualities of the food served to their children. As the Councillor for Education stated, in the Roman model “a strong relationship with the parents is crucial to activate and promote an effective food education policy that travels from the canteens to the families”.

The Roman school meal model did not emerge in a political vacuum. Quite the contrary, it was promoted and, at the same time, supported by a wider governance philosophy that emphasises the inextricability of economic development and social cohesion. As Walter Veltroni, the Mayor of Rome, has recently written:

“There is no real development without social quality […]. If there is a

Roman model, if many people are today talking in those terms about

our experience, it is because everything we do aims to keep together

economic growth and social cohesion and because at the foundation of

every choice we make there is always a way of working, of collaborating,

of ‘concerting’, of proceeding together: the municipality, the city council

and, with them, the business world, the trade associations, the social

forces and the various subjects of the civil society. It is the willingness of

creating a system…”6

In this context, school meals are assigned a role that goes well beyond the commercialised view of the service that prevails in the UK7. Quoting the Rome’s Councillor for Education, school meals reinforce the role of the school as “a place that promotes cultural, healthy and solidarity behaviours that are important for the welfare of the entire community”8. In this perspective, it is then not surprising that Romehas decided to make a signiﬁcant ﬁnancial investment in its school meal system. For the years 2004 to 2007, 166 million euros have been allocated to subsidise school meals. In practice, this means that Roman families pay only half of the total cost of the service (€4.11 per meal) and that low-income families

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receive a 25% discount on the monthly fee (€41.32 for a total of 20 school meals), whereas for poor families the service is entirely free. All the rest is paid by an administration convinced that the beneﬁts of sustainable development outweigh its costs ~ or, quoting again the Mayor of Rome, that “no single intervention can meet its objectives unless it is part of a context in which the priority is a shared idea of the city, a strong sense of community, a developmentpath that becomes real because the level of social inclusion increases”6.