Volume 9: Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland
Part 1: Wales
5. Chronological account of specific Welsh issues
School meals

5.71 Another issue which arose during this period was the banning of beef from school meals by local authorities. In England, the Humberside Education Authority announced in April 1990 that it was to ban British beef from meals in its schools. By the end of May some 20 other education authorities in the UK had taken similar decisions, including two authorities from Wales: West Glamorgan and Clwyd. Mid Glamorgan Education Authority requested a meeting with the Secretary of State for Wales, Mr David Hunt, to discuss this issue. (In a Parliamentary Question, Mr Ron Davies, Opposition spokesman on agriculture and rural affairs, asked the MAFF Minister, Mr John Gummer, to meet representatives from Mid Glamorgan to discuss the same issue.) Mr Graham Podmore of WOAD (Grade 5) advised the Secretary of State that no purpose would be served by the meeting as information put out by the Welsh Office was sufficiently clear. In addition, he was concerned that:

. . . the likely motivation of the Authority in requesting a meeting is to attempt to establish differences in approach between DoH and MAFF on the one hand, and the Welsh Office on the other; or to try to shift responsibility onto the Department for any decision which the Authority might make on the matter. ¹

5.72 This advice was accepted by Mr Hunt. In the event, by the time it was contacted about the decision, the Mid Glamorgan Education Authority had already decided to ban beef from school meals, as it was not convinced that it was safe. ² The Secretary of State asked for advice in mid-June as to whether he should write to education authorities about the bans. Mr Podmore responded that, as there was no new scientific information available, there was very little that the Welsh Office could add to their previous advice. He noted that MAFF had deemed it unnecessary, indeed possibly counterproductive, to write to local education authorities in England again. ³