A letter, sent on behalf of PETA and addressed to Kit Malthouse, has been signed by 65 MPs, councillors and organisations, calling for the current school meal requirements to be changed.
The letter urges the Department for Education to remove the requirement for meat, fish and dairy to be served as an option in every school meal.
The current standards state that meals served at schools must contain a portion of food from the following group every day:
- – a portion of meat or poultry on 3 or more days each week
- – oily fish once or more every 3 weeks
- – for vegetarians, a portion of non-dairy protein on 3 or more days each week
- – a meat or poultry product (manufactured or homemade, and meeting the legal requirements) no more than once each week in primary schools and twice each week in secondary schools (applies across the whole school day)
Those signing the letter include the Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, Conservative MP Henry Smith and Labour MPs Dame Diana Johnson and Rachael Maskell.
The MPs argue that children can reach all of their nutritional needs by eating plant-based food, and that the current meat requirement impedes efforts to increase fruit and vegetable consumption.
The letter claims that guidelines based on nutritional requirements, rather than the source of the nutrition, would “better reflect modern diets, which are increasingly meat-free”, and enable school caterers to offer healthier, environmentally-friendly meals.
“Reforming school meals will grant students a healthier, greener future and spare sensitive animals a terrifying death,” says PETA Corporate Projects Manager Dr Carys Bennett. “PETA is urging the Department for Education to update the archaic School Food Standards to remove obligatory servings of meat and dairy, foods that have been found to harm the environment and human health.”
A study from PLOS Climate found that phasing out animal farming would result in a 68% fall in global CO2 emissions.
Henry Smith, Conservative MP for Crawley and supporter of the proposal, told us “Animal agriculture causes more carbon emissions than all transportation, eliminating or at least reducing it, would not only significantly address climate change but also end the suffering and exploitation of millions of animals.”
This latest backbench campaign does not immediately appear to have resonated with the government. In response to the letter’s demands, a Department for Education spokesperson told Politics.co.uk,
“The School Food Standards have been designed to offer schools flexibility in what they offer, and we expect schools to provide choices that take account of all special dietary needs. But ultimately, it’s a matter for parents to decide whether a child eats meat, not schools.”
This campaign follows previous initiatives, with the UK’s Climate Change Committee having previously urged public sector caterers to change their approach to serving meat.
Earlier this year, a petition for schools to be required to serve vegan options was created by the Vegan Society. It has so far received 26,000 of the 100,00 needed for it to be discussed in parliament, but garnered a similar government response nonetheless:
More than five million school meals have already gone meat-free or plant-based since the launch of ProVeg UK’s School Plates programme, a non-governmental system that helps schools implement cost effective and easy meat free alternatives to their menus. Around 10% of the UK population are vegetarians, according to data collected in 2021 by YouGov. This number is expected to increase throughout the years owing to climate campaigns and the wider range of alternatives now readily available on the market.
