Healthy school meals could be under threat from government spending cuts

The Children's Food Campaign at Sustain, which encourages better farming and food, with the Soil Association and consumer group Netmums, is petitioning ministers to preserve school meal funding. The move comes in the run up to the government's comprehensive spending review next month and follows Health Secretary Andrew Lansley's disclosure of plans in July.

Sustain also protests that new academy schools are not legally obliged to conform to official school nutrition standards. And it said government moves for Change4Life to be supported more by corporate sponsors exposed schools to greater influence from snack and confectionery processors whose commitment to healthy eating is dubious.

The Local Authority Caterers Association (LACA) is awaiting a response to a letter it sent to new Members of Parliament in July urging them to back school meals. The School Lunch Grant is set to end in March 2011, while the government has already cancelled the extension of the free school meals eligibility pilots.

A spokeswoman for the School Food Trust, which governs nutrition standards for schools, downplayed the impact of funding cuts, saying the standards were "enshrined in law". Consequently, she said, the healthy nature of meals would not be affected.