School fruit and vegetable scheme goes sour on social media

Numerous parents have taken to social media to complain about the School Fruit Scheme, which, instead of promoting healthy fruit and vegetable consumption, they say is doing the exact opposite.

The scheme had already been criticised last year, with the media having published article after article on the issue of distributing fresh fruit and vegetables to school children, on account that the fruit and vegetables being provided to students are not sourced from Maltese farmers. As such, many have questioned just how fresh the fruit and vegetables being provided to students really are.

More pictures are now being posted on social media showing darkened, squashed or over-ripened fruit. Parents have complained that their children don’t want to eat the produce, and students end up either throwing it away or packing them away in their bags, which leaves a bad smell for parents to deal with afterwards.

Frustrated comments suggest that the scheme is not teaching children about healthy eating, instead increasing food waste and single use-plastic containers. Parents are now even more baffled as to how the scheme is accepting so much plastic since the EU recently announced an impending ban on such single-use plastics.

The plastic cups are also PLA cups, and they either end up being recycled or in a landfill. Apart from newspapers reporting this issue, the Malta Union of Teachers had also released a statement on the lack of environmental consciousness the government has shown through its handling of the scheme.

The EU-funded scheme was launched in 2010, and in 2017 could not be implemented at the beginning of the scholastic year due to administrative issues that needed to be sorted out.

The new School Fruit Scheme, apart from being financed by European Union, is also additionally funded by the government, which is meant to cater for all primary school children in state, church and independent schools. The scheme is managed by the Agriculture and Rural Payments Agency of the Ministry for Environment, Sustainable Development and Climate change in collaboration with the Ministry for Education and Employment, and the Ministry for Health.