School catering. This department of Occitanie is experimenting with a new way of buying food

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The Department of Gers will experiment with a new policy ofpurchase of food for colleges from 2025.

Since 2009, this department has been committed to a policy aimed at guaranteeing quality food in all the colleges in the area. “This approach, based on the promotion of fresh, seasonal, organic, labeled and local products, is part of a desire for justice and homogeneity for all Gers schools”, the community emphasizes. And to formalize these guidelines, the Departmental Charter for Sustainable and Quality Catering was put in place, defining a clear roadmap.

Four colleges to start with

As part of its expertise in catering in colleges, the Gers Department will take a new step by launching, from 1^er January 2025, an innovative experiment of ccentralization of purchases of food for middle school students’ meals. Four Gers middle schools are involved in this experiment: Auch-Mathalin, Condom, Eauze-Cazaubon and Vic-Fezensac.

Currently, each college purchases its own food products, with financial assistance proportional to the share of organic and local products. With this new initiative, the Department will become a direct purchaser, via public markets, of the food consumed in the colleges participating in the experiment.

“For the first half of 2024, 63% of the food purchased by our schools and consumed by our young people came from local farms. An approach that has been underway for several years, which is now bearing fruit. By launching this new experiment, we are continuing our investments in healthy eating in our colleges,” emphasizes Philippe Dupouy, President of the Gers Department.

Optimizing costs and promoting local agriculture, while doing good for middle school students

The experiment has several objectives:

• Increase the volume of purchases of food products from environmentally friendly production methods.
• Support local agricultural sectors by offering secure outlets and medium-term economic visibility for Gers producers.
• Harmonize and coordinate procurement practices while optimizing costs, without standardizing establishment menus.
• Strengthen the commitment to sustainable development by increasing the purchase of local and organic products, “guaranteeing healthy, environmentally friendly and animal-friendly food for our students”.

Calls for tenders

The operation will take place in this way: the college chefs will establish the purchase orders, transmitted directly to the selected suppliers, with possible intermediate validation by the Department’s catering service. The payment and administrative processing of the invoices will be ensured by the Department. In return, each participating establishment will receive a quarterly revenue voucher of €2.10 per meal sold.corresponding to the minimum cost of foodstuffs, in accordance with the annual deliberation on pricing.

The tender procedure for the purchase of foodstuffs has already been launched. The public procurement notice is composed of 63 lots which cover all the cereal, livestock and market gardening sectors as well as grocery products.

A detailed information report on this experiment will be presented to the Departmental Assembly in June 2025allowing toevaluate the first results and adjust the device if necessary.

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