Sharing the Food for Life Served Here standards updates

Things change fast in the food industry, which is why we’ve updated our Food for Life Served Here bronze certification standards to reflect where things are at right now.

We want to keep celebrating the hard work of caterers who are continuing to serve up healthy and sustainable food despite tighter budgets, fewer resources and a turbulent policy environment.

Over the last 18 months we have asked caterers – both those with and without Food for Life certification – and other expert stakeholders for their input on these standards updates. The results of this consultation have undergone high levels of scrutiny and governance to ensure the finalised standards are ambitious yet achievable.

The Food for Life Served Here standards are set by an independent Standards Task and Finish Group formed of industry experts.

The following standards have been updated:

• We are removing the requirement for caterers in Scottish schools and early years settings to demonstrate compliance with national food and drink standards to avoid duplication with legal requirements.
• To better reflect caterers’ role, they now need to demonstrate that they are monitoring suppliers’ compliance with food safety standards, rather than demonstrating that their suppliers are compliant with the standards themselves.  
• We’ve introduced categorisation for permitted foods within the ‘At least 75% of dishes are cooked from scratch’ standard.
• The list of additives to avoid has been expanded to include Titanium Dioxide E171 and artificial sweeteners

We are also updating the following standards for the silver and gold awards:

• We will now reward caterers for sourcing RSPCA Assured pork and poultry, as well as free range. RSPCA Assured welfare standards apply to both indoor and free-range systems.  Under RSPCA Assured standards, animals have more space and enriched living conditions, practices such as farrowing crates for female pigs are banned, and antibiotics are used responsibly.
• We have updated the points awarded to caterers using organic or certified sustainable palm oil, or who are avoiding it altogether. This standard aims to support the catering industry to use sustainable palm oil and therefore support the global efforts to improve the environmental and social impacts of palm oil production.

The following standards have been introduced

• 1.3 - Prioritise serving more vegetables, pulses and vegetarian meals
• 1.11 - Food waste reduction strategies are in place

The following standards have been removed 

• 1.7 Drinking water
• 1.10 Dietary and Cultural Needs  

These have been removed to reflect that both are now standard practice. Assessment of both will remain part of our pre-verification steps but will no longer be a standard to enforce.

You can see more detailed information on each standard in the handbook.