A draft decree on school canteens worries a number of parents and scientists who denounce a risk for “children’s health”.
Price, choice of menu, waste … Parents often address some reproaches to school canteens. And a new change may well accentuate the concern of certain fathers and mothers demanding on the quality of the service. For what ? Because the government has submitted a draft decree to return to the prohibition of reusable plastic dishes, in force since January 1. Trivial? Not really.
The text, revealed by The worldis carried by the Ministry of Ecological Transition. He returns to a ban on the Egalim law from 2018 and extended in 2020 by The antigaspillage law for a circular economy (AGEC) to “Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Maternity” services. The decree comes precisely from the prohibition of “Food containers of cooking, warming or plastic service”: the ministry now requests to remove the plastic from “service” and no longer “dishes, including dishes and cutlery”.
But why such a turnaround? According to RMCit would be a legal imbroglio. Concretely, the implementing decree did not resume the terms of the law. The executive therefore preferred to delete this mention to avoid being attacked in court by the plastic lobby.
“The difficulty that we had with this mention of the cutlery and plates from a legal point of view is that it does not openly correspond to the definition of warming and service containers, and we know very well that some plastic professionals will attack the text seeing that it is a legal weakness. Since it does nothing in terms of health security, there is no interest in maintaining this arrangement”, underlines Pannier-Runacher. In other words, the government realized that it had done a blunder by writing the legislation, and we prefer to adjust in the decree …
A risk to “health of our children”
But students’ defense associations do not hear it like that. For them, plastic lobbies will above all be able to reintroduce plastic cutlery and this worried return. Parents, scientists and professionals in the sector alert to their health risks. This material can indeed cause inflammation, disturb the immune response or the endocrine system, reports franceinfo.
“When you put the plastic in contact with food, in particular with hot, cold or fatty foods, this leads to a migration of certain substances that are in plastic dishes. You will ingest additives that have overweight, cardiovascular disease and of course carcinogenic effects”, explains Florence Brunet-Post, cancerologist and member of the association Health Environment Franceat RMC.
“We are not talking about disposable plastic products, but reusable products,” said the ministry with AFP. When these containers used to cook, reheat and serve food “are heated, they are likely to read chemicals in food, which is not the case with cutlery and plates, this is something that was confirmed to us by the Ministry of Health,” he argues.
The draft decree can be “the subject of observations” until March 14. Among the more than 1,200 comments registered on the consultation pagesome qualify the text as “breathtaking”, “scandalous” or “crossing back distressing”. “Economic or health interests of our children? The government gave in to the plastic industry lobby and remote on plastic prohibitions in school canteens”, regrets the association No plastic in my sea on the social network Bluesky.