(a) In 2009, Mayor Gavin Newsom issued Executive Directive 09-03, entitled “Healthy and Sustainable Food for San Francisco,” declaring the City’s commitment to increasing the amount of healthy and sustainable food, and including a series of principles to guide the directive that addressed economic and environmental sustainability, social responsibility, healthy food accessibility, and more.
(b) City stakeholders, including the Board of Supervisors, Department of Public Health (DPH), and Sheriff’s Department, have been engaged for several years in planning to include more values-based food procurement in the City’s hospitals and jails. In January 2018, a Board of Supervisors committee held a hearing on the subject (Board File No. 170843), and in June of that year the Board adopted a resolution (Res. No. 191-18) urging DPH and the Sheriff’s Department to conduct a baseline assessment of existing food vendors to evaluate their alignment with the Good Food Purchasing Standards of the Center for Good Food Purchasing. As of the end of 2019, baseline assessments of the City’s hospital and jail food procurement to assess alignment with values-based procurement have been completed by the Center for Good Food Purchasing in partnership with DPH and the Sheriff’s Department. These assessments are on file with the Clerk of the Board of Supervisors in Board File No. 200244, for the ordinance establishing this Chapter 21D.
(c) Cities and other public entities across the United States have adopted “Good Food Purchasing Standards,” including: Los Angeles Unified School District (2012); City of Los Angeles (2012); San Francisco Unified School District (2016); Oakland Unified School District (2016); Chicago Public Schools, Chicago Park District, and the City of Chicago (2017); Cook County, Illinois (2018); Washington, D.C. Public Schools (2019); Cincinnati Public Schools (2019); City of Boston, including Boston Public Schools (2019); and Austin Independent School District (2019).
(d) The Good Food Purchasing Program, as established by the Center for Good Food Purchasing, aims to support public institutions in transforming the way they purchase food, by creating a transparent and equitable food system built on principles of social justice and racial equity and rooted in five core values: local economies; environmental sustainability; valued workforce; animal welfare; and nutrition. Each of the five value categories has a baseline standard for institutions to meet in order to be considered a “Good Food Provider.” A copy of the Good Food Purchasing Program is on file with the Clerk of the Board of Supervisors in File No. 200244 for the ordinance establishing this Chapter 21D. These standards are based on third-party certifications that have been ranked by national experts in each category. The program allows institutions to assess their food vendors’ alignment with the good food purchasing standards, and sets multi-year goals for meeting the baseline standards, with flexibility to prioritize some categories over others. The five value categories are as follows:
(1) Local Economies: Support diverse, family and cooperatively owned, small and mid-sized agricultural and food processing operations within the local area or region.
(2) Environmental Sustainability: Source from producers that employ sustainable production systems to reduce or eliminate synthetic pesticides and fertilizers; avoid the use of hormones, routine antibiotics, and genetic engineering; conserve and regenerate soil and water; protect and enhance wildlife habitats and biodiversity; and reduce on-farm energy and water consumption, food waste, and greenhouse gas emissions. Reduce menu items that have high carbon and water footprints using strategies such as plant-forward menus that feature smaller portions of animal proteins in a supporting role.
(3) Valued Workforce: Source from producers and vendors that provide safe and healthy working conditions and fair compensation for all food chain workers and producers, from production to consumption.
(4) Animal Welfare: Source from producers that provide healthy and humane conditions for farm animals.
(5) Nutrition: Promote health and well-being by offering generous portions of vegetables, fruit, whole grains, and minimally processed foods, while reducing salt, added sugars, saturated fats, and red meat consumption, and eliminating artificial additives. Improve equity, affordability, accessibility, and consumption of high quality, culturally relevant good food in all communities.
(e) Many of the aforementioned value categories, including not only Environmental Sustainability, but also Local Economies, are critically connected to the City’s efforts to combat climate change. While the City’s efforts have focused on reducing emissions through strategies via transportation, buildings, and zero waste as documented in the Department of the Environment’s July 2019 “Focus 2030: A Pathway to Net Zero Emissions” report, reducing meat consumption and increasing plant-based diets is an important strategy to curb climate change, evidenced by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s “Climate Change and Land” Special Report (IPCC, 2019: Climate Change and Land: an IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems).
(f) DPH serves approximately 6,000 meals per day (approximately two million per year) and the Sheriff’s Department serves approximately 4,200 meals per day (approximately 1.5 million per year). Given the large amount of money spent by these departments on procurement of food, their adherence to a Good Food Purchasing Program will likely positively influence their vendors to adopt practices consistent with Good Food Purchasing Standards.
(Added by Ord. 134-20, File No. 200244, App. 8/21/2020, Eff. 9/21/2020)