Following the passing of Her Majesty The Queen, Love British Food delayed the official start date of British Food Fortnight until Tuesday 20th September with the end date remaining 2nd October. For the 2022 event, a special focus was put on encouraging as many schools and hospitals to take part.
Environment Secretary Ranil Jayawardena, commented: “From Hereford beef to Scottish smoked salmon, British food and drink is the best in the world and the businesses who produce it employ more people than our automotive and aerospace manufacturers put together. British Food Fortnight is a chance for us to all learn more about where our food comes from, and enjoy Britain’s best seasonal, locally-sourced products.”
Local Authority school caterers and NHS catering teams have been working all year towards putting nutritional, seasonal and British sourced menus on pupil and patient plates for the next two weeks. The event is also being used to highlight the benefits of short supply chains, particularly in the public sector that buys £2.6bn of food every year.
Alexia Robinson, founder of Love British Food, said: “This year’s event is the culmination of months of hard work by catering teams across the country. We set out to inspire and enable public sector caterers to put more quality British food on school and hospital menus and the hundreds of schools and many NHS Trusts taking part show how much has been achieved.
“With the Government potentially introducing new buying standards that will require the public sector to ‘aspire to sourcing 50% of its food locally or to higher environmental production standards’ the activities taking place during British Food Fortnight are an important foundation to achieving this.”
Love British Food have been organising the fortnight for 20 years and over time it has become established as the biggest national celebration of British food on the national calendar, with this year’s looking to be the biggest yet.
Jason O'Rourke, head teacher at Washingborough Academy in Lincolnshire, added: “British Food Fortnight is one of the highlights of our academic year. It gives us a framework to further support the children’s food education and educate children and their families about the need for shorter supply chains and the incredible variety of seasonal and sustainable food that is grown and produced locally and nationally.”