OCM National Collaboration Members,
On behalf of the Organization for Competitive Markets poultry committee led by Mike Weaver, I am reaching out to seek your organization’s support of an effort to ensure more locally-sourced, fair, humane, environmentally sustainable, and nutritious chicken is served in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) cafeterias.
The LAUSD is the largest public school system in the state of California, and the second largest in the country. The district is considering bids for chicken procurement worth $60 million, and we are asking you to join a large number of local and national organizations in urging LAUSD to follow the Good Food Purchasing Policy (GFPP) it has already adopted, which outlines meaningful procurement guidelines for improving the regional food system.
The LAUSD school board is scheduled to vote on this issue on February 9th, and we plan to deliver the attached letter in advance to help ensure that any company awarded a new contract for poultry procurement lives up to the GFPP guidelines. Please click here and let me know by February 4th if we can add your organization’s name to the letter below.
Thank you so much for your consideration.
Angela Huffman
OCM member
Facilitator, OCM Poultry Committee
January 16, 2016
Mr. Steve Zimmer, President
Board of Education, Los Angeles Unified School District
333. S. Beaudry Avenue, 24th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90017
Dear President Zimmer,
We want to thank the Los Angeles Unified School District for adopting the Good Food Purchasing Policy (GFPP). Companies in the food supply chain for school systems should be evaluated against meaningful guidelines to ensure the food is locally-sourced, fair, humane, environmentally sustainable, and nutritious.
We are writing to urge you to ensure that any company awarded a new contract for poultry procurement adhere to the GFPP guidelines. At the heart of your endeavor is a need for transparency and accountability throughout the procurement process. We urge you to require vendors to publicly disclose their efforts to provide chicken to LAUSD at the 5-star level of the GFPP, and allow public review and comment on the bidders’ proposed plans.
Again, we applaud your commitment to ensuring the well-being of school children and those in the food supply chain, including workers, farmers, animals, the environment, and local economies.
Thank you very much for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Your Organization
