Food for thought
Hub seeks locally grown items to serve in school
The City Council is pushing to adopt an ordinance that would give the city’s public schools an assessment of the companies it’s purchasing food from to allow local preference and avoid businesses with labor violations.
The Good Food Purchasing Program, which has been adopted by other big cities around the U.S., including Chicago and Los Angeles, would also put standards around animal welfare and healthy foods, City Councilor At-Large Michelle Wu told the Herald.
“The idea is that we would add requirements in the food procurement and the food purchasing systems in the Boston City government that would give preference to locally produced or grown foods,” Wu said after a City Council hearing yesterday. “Thereby supporting jobs here in Massachusetts and the region … When we spend public dollars, we should be squeezing every bit of value out of those dollars.”
Laura Benavidez, who serves as the Executive Director of Boston Public Schools’ Food and Nutritional Services, supported the initiative, adding that she had experience seeing its benefits in Los Angeles.
“The ideals behind the Good Food Purchasing Program gives us the opportunity to strengthen the nutrition of our meals by providing transparency in the food that we serve,” she said. “And it is a philosophy that I support directly.”
Wu said the ordinance could be passed at the next City Council meeting, the last of the year. If passed, the ordinance calls for the council to communicate the standards to distributors and suppliers and request that they give out data for assessment within 12 months.