A meeting of the Parliamentary Group for Children will be held in the Senate on 14 July 2023 at 12:00 pm to discuss the Senate bill to amend the Food and Nutrition Safety Act, the Childcare Act and the Education Law.

The meeting will be attended by the Future Food 4 Climate coalition partners including Parents for Future, Travel with Claw, Varia Posnania, Spring without Barriers, the Casket Foundation, but also by Councillor Filip Pelc.

In its objectives, the bill aims to:

1) make it compulsory to provide exclusively plant-based meals once a week in schools and educational institutions, as well as in nurseries and children’s clubs;

2) ensure the availability of balanced meals, in particular vegetarian and vegan meals, to children and pupils who are on such a diet either of their own choice or a choice made jointly with their parents;

3) to detail the health and safety regulations applicable to public and non-public schools and establishments, as well as nurseries and children’s clubs, with regard to the need to take into account the air quality standard, during the stay of children and pupils in these units.

The draft law is important because, at present, in the Polish legal and factual state, there is no possibility for children and schoolchildren to have access to plant-based meals. The current regulations governing collective feeding in schools make it impossible in practice to introduce plant-based meals to educational institutions (even at the request of the child/parent), let alone oblige educational institutions/their governing bodies to ensure the permanent availability of such meals. Plant-based meals are treated as irrelevant, and the only practical possibility to provide them to a child in an educational institution is to require a special medical certificate, which would include indications to switch to a plant-based diet. 

The current situation is discriminatory and contrary to both scientific knowledge and human and civil rights. The proposed legislative solutions will be a good step towards much-needed systemic change and food system transition.

Photo: Unsplash