News

LACA chair Anne Bull has personally written to Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Mary Creagh to rebut claims she has made that caterers have been less than candid in dealing with the issue of horsemeat being passed off as beef.

Below is the full text of her letter to the Labour MP for Wakefield:

Dear Ms Creagh,

I am to writing to you regarding your comments to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs, Owen Patterson MP, in the House of Commons on the 11th February 2013. In the debate,
you suggested that supermarkets had acted with speed and a degree of transparency on the recent
issue of horsemeat being found in meat based products and at the same time expressed your
disappointment that the hospitality industry and caterers had not been as “candid”. 

On behalf of LACA (formerly known as the Local Authority Caterers Association) may I take this
opportunity to stress to you that education caterers are taking this issue extremely seriously. As is good
practice, we will continue to work with procurement and public health colleagues in local authorities to
ensure that the quality of food served in schools remains an absolute priority. Local authority-maintained
schools are subject to robust nutritional standards which provide a safety net for both caterers, and
children and young people in schools. In addition, we have extremely stringent procurement processes in
which great emphasis is placed on quality, as well as traceability.  I cannot however comment on the food
provided in all Academies and Free Schools, as both are officially exempt from the robust nutritional
standards that apply to local authority maintained schools. This is an example of why one set of
standards across all schools is very important, and something that LACA has been campaigning for.  

Currently the Food Standard Agency (FSA) is underlining what is already good catering practice and
should be in place regardless of recent revelations. We have always fully endorsed these standards of
practice to ensure the pupils whom we cater for in schools receive the best possible quality of food. As
education caterers, we are limited in the amount of direct action we can take in terms of testing the food
we serve, as this is undertaken by public health authorities. However, in light of recent revelations,
caterers are working closely with sector suppliers who are taking immediate action to test sources of
supply. 

Rest assured that we are taking every possible action, as high quality school food has always been and
remains our top priority.  

LACA has worked for over 20 years to support the catering managers in local authorities, private
contractors and individual schools who provide school meals services throughout the education sector in
England, Scotland and Wales. We are the largest supplier of school catering in the UK, covering 11
regions throughout the UK, catering for 20,000 schools and providing over 3 million school meals every
day. For further information and updates, please visit our website (http://www.laca.co.uk/).

Yours sincerely,

Anne Bull
LACA National Chair