More than 80% of municipalities do not respect the objectives of the Egalim law in school canteens, by not offering enough organic and local products.
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What do we find on our children’s plates in the canteen? Not enough organic, local and labeled products. Less than one in five municipalities meets the objectives set by the Egalim law, adopted in 2022.
It must be said that it is not so simple, especially for small towns that lack resources. In the canteen of the primary school of Aviron, a thousand inhabitants in Eure, near Évreux, we try as best we can to respect these rules.
On the menu that lunchtime, “cucumbers with sauce, potatoes and cordon bleu, chocolate brownie.” All cooked every day by the chef hired by the municipality. To comply with the law, organic, labeled or local products are required. The main difficulty: deliveries, explains Sophie Launay, the cook, who is not far from tearing her hair out every time she chooses the menus.
“I have a little more white hairshe laughs. The smaller the structure, the more complicated it is to find local producers. Already with the price of petrol, they now have difficulty moving for 90 children, for just ten kilos of carrots for example, it does not interest them. They lose more money than they earn. That is where the difficulty lies.”
So, like 82% of municipalities according to the Association of Mayors of France, Aviron probably does not reach the thresholds of the Egalim law: 50% of so-called products “sustainable and quality”, including 20% organic. The mayor, Sophie Bertin, is nevertheless making an effort. Local meat, organic vegetables whenever possible, bread is supplied by local bakers. But the elected official would be quite incapable of saying whether or not she respects Egalim’s criteria.
“The Egalim law is going in the right direction”, recognizes the chosen one, but “We are supposed to say precisely how much we buy and how many organic products. We would have to enter tables and grids, calculate percentages. We cannot respond to the same demands as in large municipalities.”
“At the Aviron town hall, there is a person who takes care of the accounting and you can imagine that the cook has other things to do every evening than to check what quantity, what percentage.”
Sophie Bertin, Mayor of Avironto franceinfo
The largest cities are subject to other constraints. Any order over 40,000 euros must comply with the rules of competitive bidding. It is impossible for them to directly designate local producers to supply the canteens.
However, one in five municipalities manages to achieve these objectives set by law. With an emblematic example: that of Mouans-Sartoux, 10,000 inhabitants, in the Alpes-Maritimes. Since 2012, it has been 100% organic. The canteens are provided in particular by the farm managed by the City, explains Gilles Pérole, deputy for education. “We have a municipal farm that produces 85% of the vegetables that children eat. We were able to build an alternative solution in a department, the Alpes-Maritimes, where there is very little agriculture.”
The rest of the products come from organic suppliers. All this, of course, is expensive. But the municipality has managed to offset these expenses. Half of the menus are vegetarian and cost half as much as a meal with meat or fish. Waste has also been reduced by 80%.
“We started weighing our leftovers every day, explains Gilles Pérole. Once you have cooked 50 kilos of grated carrots and thrown away ten of them, you are not going to start cooking 50 kilos of grated carrots again. Next time, you will do 40. These two levers generate an overall saving of 40% of the food cost price.”
The mayor calls on municipalities to change their philosophy, to invest, but the transition “takes time”recognizes the elected official. He counts a hundred municipalities that have set up or are in the process of setting up their own farm to produce vegetables.
But some are starting to get impatient, including Philippe Camburet, president of the National Federation of Organic Agriculture. He points out that the obligations of the Egalim law now go back more than two years. “It’s sad. We are full of organic products in many sectors today, because household consumption has decreased a lot. More and more of us are producing organically and unfortunately, we are very far from the objectives.”
“We have to take matters into our own hands and, politically, take responsibility for taking this turn.”
Philippe Camburet, President of the National Federation of Organic Agricultureto franceinfo
According to him, it is all just a question of will on the part of local authorities and the State, which must help the municipalities more. “We need more resources to support communities. We need to subsidize training, kitchen staff and also subsidize investment in facilities so that finally, the food transition of communities is not just wishful thinking and that it is effective and as quickly as possible for the next school year.”
The solution also involves more exchanges between the different players, explains this producer from Yonne, to adapt local organic products to the demands of the municipalities.