For more than a year, chicken has been a rare item in Los Angeles public school cafeterias, reflecting the school board’s policy to hold vendors responsible for animal and worker welfare among other things and the challenge of finding enough food for the nation’s second-largest school system. The Los Angeles Times says chicken tenders, patties and frankfurters will be back as soon as May now that three new vendors are under contract.
“The incoming chicken, per district rules, has to be antibiotic-free,” says the newspaper. The district signed five-year contracts worth up to $50 million with Perdue Farms, Goodman Food Products and Somma Food Group. They take the place of Tyson Foods and Pilgrim’s Pride, two of the largest U.S. poultry supplier, who were involved in talks that fell apart in 2015. Chicken is one of the most popular items on school food menus.
Since 2012, Los Angeles Unified School District has evaluated food suppliers in five areas: nutritional quality of the food, animal welfare, treatment of employees, environmental impact and local economic impact. “The 2015 chicken contract was seen as a watershed,” says the Los Angeles Times, because food activists were putting pressure on big poultry producers to change their practices. One of their targets was routine use of medically important antibiotics as a growth promoter, a practice that the FDA now bars.
The Los Angeles schools are part of the Urban School Food Alliance, composed of six of the largest U.S. districts with a total of 2.9 million students. In late 2014, the alliance announced its members wanted antibiotic-free chicken for school meals. The group said its size would give it more bargaining power for healthy food.