Vive Charlie Issue 5 | Page 10

Mark Sparrow is a writer, journalist, photographer and broadcaster. Presenter of Channel 4's Dispatches: 'The Truth About Hospital Food'. Mark uses Twitter to debate and discuss issues at @markgsparrow.

© Mark Sparrow 2015

There’s a pig-shaped elephant in the room following a report this week that the trendy Borough of Islington in north London has decided to stop serving pork in all of its 46 primary schools.

I’m rather partial to an elephant in the room so with this in mind I decided to find out what was going after reading about the ban in the London Evening Standard. At this point I should say that the council emphatically denies that pork has actually been banned from its schools. Instead it says that pork is simply ‘no longer on the menu’. That sounds like a ban to me but bureaucrats are masters of semantics… if not transparency.

Perhaps the council had hoped its decision to shun pork would pass unnoticed as sausages were probably still served to children, but presumably made from beef or turkey instead of pork. I decided to tweet about the ban and was soon contacted by Islington councillor Raphael Andrews who accused me of telling ‘porky pies’. The recently elected councillor wouldn’t tell me which of my statements was untrue but insisted that I visit the council’s website to discover ‘the truth’.

So I did visit the council’s website and the truth, according to Islington, is that the council has asked its catering contractors to remove sausages (and any other meals that may contain pork or pork) derivatives from menus offered to all children in its primary schools. However, the council insists it hasn’t banned anything and that if any school really were to develop a hankering for the occasional pork sausage it would be ‘willing to work with the school’ to see how it could make that happen.

My initial reaction was that this was probably a money-saving exercise as there must be a fair few Muslim and Jewish children living in north London and that would mean that on the days pork was served it would be essential to provide a substitute halal or kosher meat as well as a ‘healthy choice’ and a vegetarian option. According to Islington’s own census report, some 10% of the borough is Muslim and just 1% is Jewish. Conceivably 11% of pupils are possibly unable to eat pork and to this figure we should also add vegetarians and vegans.

possibly unable to eat pork and to this figure we should also add vegetarians and vegans.

The education chiefs in the Borough are concerned that Muslim or Jewish children may inadvertently eat pork because they are thought to be too young to fully understand the dietary restrictions of the faith that their parents have chosen for them. There have been a few incidents where children who are forbidden from eating pork have accidentally chosen a dish that contained pork, but as far as I know none of them died. However, it was enough to upset their parents and in fairness it is asking a lot of schools to police what every child chooses for his or her lunch. Interestingly, though, the same could probably be said for children with gluten intolerance or a nut allergy. The implications of eating gluten or nuts can potentially be life threatening whereas eating pork is unlikely to kill you.

If the council’s logic were to be followed through to its logical conclusion then gluten, dairy products and nuts should probably be banned from all schools, along with any other allergens that are likely to harm children. Ironically that ban should probably include non-pork sausages that may contain gluten, or even nut dishes served to vegetarians.

With so many restrictions on diets for both cultural and health reasons it must be difficult to keep tabs on what every child is eating, although it’s technically possible to put a flag or marker on the smart card that many children use to pay for their lunch which could alert staff to a potential issue. That could be more difficult now that Nick Clegg has decreed the majority of primary school pupils should receive free lunches.

The council’s decision probably makes commercial and legal sense by removing the potential risk of accidental pork consumption. In these litigious times, who could blame the council for that? Children don’t need to eat pork but the council should have handled things better. It should have been more open about its reasons for pulling pork from its menus. Instead rumour was allowed to propagate and many put two and two together and came up with four. Some people

Sausages are off the menu in north London schools.