School milk deliveries underway in Austria
Image credit: Müller
For 25 years, 85 regional dairy farmers across Austria have invested in supplies to kindergartens and schools. Farm dairies have invested, acquired a fleet of vehicles, developed quality assurance systems, further developed containers in an environmentally friendly manner and carried out numerous tastings and presentations.
At the beginning of the 2020/2021 school year, the change in the ordinance also took effect, according to which all elementary school classes can receive free drinking milk for five days – after that, the children can choose from the regional supplier’s offer. The EU school programme for milk provides financial support for the supply of educational institutions with agricultural products.
The added sugar content in dairy products will be reduced to a maximum of 4.5% for the 2020/2021 school year (from 2022/2023: 3.5%). As the plastic drinking straw will be banned in 2021, there are already numerous experiments with other materials. A question has been, if changing the drinking behaviours, where one = opens the container and drinks, would not be the best solution, so no drinking straw would be required.
The well-being of the children has to be at the fore in all measures relating to the EU school programme. The suppliers have taken precautions, attended further training courses in the summer, researched, bought operating materials, further developed labeling and are ready to go. This has meant that committed direct marketers in Austrian had a very good success at the start of the new school year.