Sustainable public procurement of food

Overview

Public food procurement provides the opportunity to drive local and regional food economies towards more sustainable paths. Within these legal frameworks, local and regional authorities (LRAs) use different approaches to provide opportunities for the introduction of locally or regionally sourced produce in their food procurement. This short study adds to other initiatives aimed at disseminating knowledge on practices that are effective in increasing the use of sustainable food by public institutions. This is done by briefly presenting ten cases related to food procurement for public catering (Part 1). Cases are selected from different countries to take into account some of the structural specificities linked to national laws, maturity of implementation of GPP/SPP, and general management and organisation of public canteens. In Part 3, highlights derived from the cases are used to outline synthetic guidelines for LRAs on the main aspects to be considered for the introduction of sustainable food into public contracts.