Food & Health Alliance

The bronze, silver and gold awards are part of the Soil Association’s Food for Life programme whose eventual aim is to ensure that the ingredients served up on the public plate are at least 75% unprocessed, 50% from local sources and 30% organic.

The Catering Mark, launched in February 2009, is open to catering establishments across the UK. Three Scottish organisations have already been awarded the top gold award.

The awards are designed to allow caterers to make incremental progress towards greater use of fresh, seasonal and local ingredients as well as high welfare meat and sustainable fish.

The bronze mark, for instance, requires caterers, among other things, to produce seasonal menus, to have 75% freshly prepared dishes and all meat meeting UK welfare standards. Meanwhile the gold requires that in addition to meeting bronze and silver standards, at least 30% of ingredients are organic, 50% locally sourced and that non-meat dishes are promoted as part of a balanced, climate-friendly diet.

The three Scottish establishments awarded the gold catering mark are Cawdor Castle Restaurant in Nairn, Celtic Football Club’s children’s menu in the No 7 Restaurant and East Ayrshire Council catering service in 40 of its primary schools, which serve over 5,000 meals a day.

In addition, Highland Council has applied for the bronze catering mark in its primary and secondary schools – which together are responsible for over 15,000 school meals a day.

The Edinburgh Steiner School has applied for gold for its catering service, which uses ingredients mostly sourced from two local organic farms.

Over the next three years the Soil Association Scotland hopes to have a number of local authorities and five major caterers achieve the Food for Life catering mark.

Soil Association Scotland is also involved in various supply chain projects, including working with Argyll and Bute Council to increase procurement of local food and with Celtic FC to promote Food for Life at other sports stadia. It is working with Scottish Food Quality Certification (SFQC) to increase the availability of Scottish Freedom Food poultry products for caterers.

There’s still much to be done, says Food for Life manager Pam Rodway. But she is optimistic about the future. ‘Food for Life is helping to draw attention to the wider issues around food by highlighting good practice and that is good news for everyone involved in catering.’