U.K. Councils Say No Deal Brexit Will Cause a Decline in School Meal Standards

Brexit is going to damage the U.K. restaurant industry and Britain’s food supply. Now, U.K. councils are warning that a no deal Brexit will also cause a decline in the nutritional standards of school dinners, according to the BBC.

Numerous U.K. councils are concerned that Brexit food shortages will lead to supply chain breakdown and a lack of choice for meal providers, leading to a reliance on tinned and dry goods. Concerns over meeting special dietary requirements and, most tellingly, the price of school dinners are also common across many councils, with no-deal Brexit plans covering a need to jettison nutritional standards while production lines adjust to any disruption.

At present, the government and Department for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) mandate that local councils are in charge of ensuring that “vulnerable” users of public services — schools, hospitals, care homes — get high standards of nutrition; they are also expected to manage their own supply chains. Recently, supermarket bosses and the Food and Drink Federation (FDF) have called for competition laws to be frozen in the event of no deal Brexit, though councils are yet to suggest a similar model.

Current school food standards say that meals must contain:

• One or more wholegrain variety of starchy foods each week.
• One or more portions of both fruit and vegetables per day.
• At least three different fruits and three different vegetables each week.
• Oily fish once or more every three weeks.
• No snacks, except nuts, seeds, vegetables and fruit with no added salt, sugar or fat .

As organisations continue to warn the government of Brexit’s danger to the U.K. food and restaurant industry, this is yet another example of the internal planning necessary that flies in the face of repeated governmental assertions that