VIENNA GOES ORGANIC
What started as a cross-party initiative in 2001 has become a model project Vienna can be proud of — organic food. In the municipal kindergartens the overall share of organic food is already at 50 per cent and for milk and dairy products it is as high as 91 per cent. Every day the kids enjoy some 30,000 organic meals — and they like it. And the high quality does not cost the parents one cent more. ‘Organic’ is not just an empty buzzword in Vienna’s schools either: since the beginning of the 2005–06 school year, school lunch for the approximately 18,800 students at Vienna’s 90 all-day schools has a 30 per cent share of organic ingredients. In autumn 2007 the share will be increased to 40 per cent. A maximum price of €3.27 for a two-course organic lunch guarantees that it is affordable for everyone.
Healthy food for ill and elderly people
In Vienna’s hospitals the breakfast rolls and sandwiches are guaranteed 100 per cent organic. The city’s 31 residential homes also opt for healthy food. The share of organic ingredients averages about 20 per cent, but in some homes it is already over 30 per cent. Of the €13.8mn spent on food by the residential homes in 2006, 17 per cent — approximately €2.38mn — was spent on organic food.
Influencing the market as a bulk buyer
These initiatives make Vienna a model city in Europe. As a bulk buyer, the City of Vienna has a positive impact on the market with its health-oriented measures and sets standards for the procurement of environmentally friendly and sustainable products. Shorter transport distances and therefore less emissions, no use of pesticides, humanely raised animals — all this benefits the environment and produces safe, GM-free food. International guests are increasingly interested in Vienna’s initiative for organic food. Last year alone, delegations from the United States, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Slovenia, Japan, Germany and Hungary visited Vienna’s kindergartens — and organic food is always a top issue.
A head start on organic food
It is important to teach children about healthy food early on. The kindergartens of the City of Vienna place great emphasis on healthy nutrition. The meals are planned in co-operation with our partner Verkehrsbüro Kulinarik together with a nutritionist. The meals are cooked from fresh ingredients, cooled rapidly and delivered to the kindergartens twice a week. The food is prepared without the use of preservatives, food colouring and problematic ingredients such as sodium glutamate and trans-fats.
Healthy snacks from the kindergarten’s vegetable patch
An important part of kindergarten education is to offer the children possibilities for exploration and discovery. Many kindergartens have small vegetable patches or herb gardens; others make field trips to nearby markets. From autumn 2007 all 361 municipal kindergartens will serve a healthy mid-morning snack, which will be mainly organic and from regional production. The snack will vary with the seasons, contain healthy ingredients and essential nutrients and, most of all, the kids should like it. A multifaceted approach to the topic encourages acceptance among the children. For example, the kids plant cress and watch it grow; they water it, harvest it and finally eat it, for example with bread and butter. They also sing songs, invent stories and learn rhymes about healthy eating. The success can be seen in the many drawings of ‘veggie people’ hanging on the walls.
Strict controls
When the City of Vienna began implementing the project in 2003, the main requirement of the EU-wide call for procurement tenders for Vienna’s kindergartens was to have a minimum share of 30 per cent organically produced ingredients during the first years. Over the following five years, this share was to be increased to 50. This goal was achieved in only three years. This year, more than 50 per cent of the products purchased for use in the kindergartens must be organic. An interim report is prepared every quarter by a certified organic food-inspection centre and an auditor. All producers of organic products must have a contract with the inspection centre, which monitors that the organic production standards are observed. Resellers and companies that process the ingredients and produce and sell organic products also have to be registered with an organic food-inspection centre. They make sure the organic food really deserves its name.
Organic food at all-day schools
In Vienna, school lunches are selected by the parents associations. To guarantee particularly high quality, the Vienna School Board and the Vienna confederation of parents associations developed a list of very strict criteria. Only companies that meet all these criteria were included in the pool of companies the parents can choose from. Quarterly reports from organic food-inspection centres and an annual auditor’s report guarantee that the share of organic ingredients is maintained. This secures a very high quality of school lunches at Vienna’s all-day schools.
Vienna is Austria’s largest organic farmer
The City of Vienna not only buys organic food, it also grows it. With 600ha organic farmland, the metropolis has one of Austria’s largest organic farms. On the city-owned fields, 1,500 tonnes of grain and 900 tonnes of potatoes annually are grown in keeping with the standards of organic farming. This local production of crops has many benefits, especially for the climate. Without the tomatoes produced in Vienna, 2 million additional transport kilometres would be necessary each year, producing a considerable amount of CO2 and particulate matter. A recent calculation showed that 1 kilogramme of tomatoes from Vienna causes 0.7g CO2, while the same amount of tomatoes imported from the Netherlands causes 104.7g. Vienna’s farms also use natural pest control, employing beneficial organisms instead of chemicals.
With this wealth of initiatives — from healthy food to the use of energy-saving technologies — the City of Vienna seeks to set a good example for every individual and hopes to achieve a change in attitude of producers and consumers: the conscious use of our resources while maintaining economic efficiency.
