Pride Catering wins Soil Association's Food for Life Silver Mark

Deborah Kenny, senior operations manager for Pride, played a key role in finding and vetting appropriate food suppliers for St. Stephen's. She explained: "We won the award thanks to our high food quality standards and commitment to traceability and provenance - for example, we only use free-range chicken and eggs; all our fruit, vegetables and milk are organic, and we definitely don't use undesirables like GM ingredients, E-numbers and hydrogenated fats! "All the meat is either free-range or locally sourced Red Tractor standard - our free range chicken has been sourced from a farm in Godstone in Surrey, our pork comes from Sussex, and our beef is from Hampshire. We're only using MSC-certified sustainable seafood too." Katrina Kollegaeva of the Soil Association added: "We spent many hours discussing the progress of the school with Pride, talking to suppliers, visiting farms, and they were always keen to hear new ideas - such a useful quality for a school caterer bound by tight budgets, childrens' dislikes and parents' preferences! We're very much looking forward to working with the Pride team on achieving Gold for St Stephens, and getting more of Pride's schools to be part of Food for Life." Pride serves over 200 lunches a day at St Stephens.