So why isn’t this the norm?
of antibiotics for animals and especially for those animals that we raise to help feed one another.” Dr. Jason Newland from Nationwide Children’s. Our data tells us that communities in our member districts are concerned with sustainability, antibiotic resistance, animal welfare, and higher food standards. The Alliance has chosen to join our districts in this commitment to NAE to help move the needle in that direction.
But how much volume do we need to be able to make this newly developed product affordable to districts?
Arriving at the product launch phase of the project was no small feat. By staying committed to the task, and the three years of behind-the- scenes work, we were able to overcome several challenges we encountered along the way. Here are just a few: • We collectively chose to develop our own chicken specification that would meet the members requirements. • We still had to stay within • We had to find a co-op that was large enough to do the purchasing and would be willing to work with inter- state purchasing. • We overcame the unexpected challenge of “one-off” procurement bid concerns within districts. all the federal, state, and local procurement rules. • We confronted fear and concerns from industry around the RFP and how this would impact their companies in the future. • We had to adapt to the misunderstandings and miscommunication with industry by writing over 11 amendments to the RFP in order to improve our responses. • We learned that this type of bid is intimidating to many companies and watched our interested companies dwindle from over a dozen to only two responding to the final bid.
Nearly One Million Pounds Later…
For this pilot our Alliance committed to acquiring 955,550 pounds of clean-label NAE chicken to serve as a limited time offer (LTO) to students. This equated to 4,368,231 servings spread across 16 districts. Over four million students benefited from this pilot. This means that four million students were served a higher-quality, cleaner- label product at no additional cost to the student or district. “The Alliance really wanted to make a significant sustainable change, and so we decided to take this project on - and go big or go home! We knew that there had to be a change in our food system.” Dr. Katie Wilson We want a better product. We want kids to get better food. This is all part of the initiative.
Echoing Districts Everywhere
“USFA now is a credible organization. USDA is looking to us to provide input as to what’s happening at schools. We can speak on behalf of not only the 18 members that are part of USFA, but also about other school districts, which are from other states and regions, because we are echoing the same things as them. We want a better product. We want kids to get better food. This is all part of the initiative.” Manish P. Singh, Los Angeles Unified School District The ticket to a high-quality final product is the use of high- quality ingredients. However, these ingredients are often outside of a district’s ability to purchase due to the higher cost that is typically associated. But what would happen if we apply the basic principle of purchasing to these items: the more you buy at one time, the less the individual per-item cost will be (ie: the Costco effect).
~ Manish P. Singh ~ LA Unifed School District
BOOST THE ROOST | USFA INITIATIVE RECAP | PAGE 15
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