"Budget cuts to school meals risk causing job losses"

INTERVIEW – Members of the MR-Engagés majority party approved on Wednesday the government's budget proposal intended to "keep the budget deficit under control" in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation (WBF). The text, widely criticized for generating some €255 million in savings starting next year, is particularly concerning due to the cryptic reduction in school meal budgets. This will have unforeseen repercussions for the institutional catering sector, points out Gérard Filot, president of the Fédération des Cuisines Collectives Wallonie-Bruxelles (FCCWB).

© FCCWB / GOUVERNEMENT FWB

“Childhood is doing its part.” The familiarity of the phrase might seem surprising given the context, but the Wallonia-Brussels Federation government has used it for every item in its budget outline, designed to “prevent unsustainable debt growth by 2030.” Thus, education, youth services, justice centers, culture, scientific research, and all other sectors under the executive’s purview are “doing their part.” The goal is for this collective effort to achieve €500 million in structural savings within four years.

And a food-related dimension emerges amidst the accounting lines, since the French Community is reallocating "a portion of the funds allocated to free meals." Opposition parliamentarians deplore this as a very rough and inadequate amount, and several social actors lament its shortcomings, fearing a deterioration in access to adequate food, an internationally recognized right.

There are no budget cuts to school meals, maintained, maintains, and will continue to maintain Valérie Glatigny, the Minister of Education (MR), peppering her explanations with legal and administrative references to decree-based prerogatives and isolated transfers between operating budgets. She never presents a consolidated figure. Some experts, such as those at the Family League, have done the math, determining that for some schools, less than a symbolic one euro per meal will remain.

Without getting into a detailed accounting debate, let's establish that there is no outright elimination, but rather a clear, structural, and lasting reduction in specific public support for school meals. In both a political and functional sense, the government is cutting food access budgets because it no longer guarantees the continuation of certain free meals, nor the completeness or uniform quality of those meals.

And what about the impact on institutional catering in all of this? A detail, clearly overlooked by the political world, which nevertheless insists on having "taken its responsibilities." A marginalized sector that serves, in Wallonia alone, more than 200,000 meals a day in over 3,000 canteens, according to data from the College of Producers (Socopro, 2025).

Gérard Filot, president of the Fédération des Cuisines Collectives Wallonie-Bruxelles (FCCWB), has dedicated himself for over fifty years to improving the quality of food and services in institutional kitchens. He objectively observes the gap between the political narrative and the reality on the ground. Interview.

Gondola Foodservice: For professional kitchens serving school canteens, what would be the operational and financial consequences of this budget cut by the Wallonia-Brussels Federation?

Gérard Filot: Substantial savings could lead to job losses. The reallocation is a government decision following a detailed and well-reasoned study. But is this a way to reduce, or even eliminate, certain budgets for school cafeterias? We don't have confirmed figures. However, based on the information gathered, we can say that the number of hot lunches consumed in primary and preschools represents approximately 8% of the total number of students!

School cafeterias, designed for serving hot lunches and operating on average 165 days a year, must become vibrant spaces for learning about healthy eating. But how many such cafeterias are there in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation ? We propose to conduct a thorough survey of school kitchens and cafeterias for primary education (excluding daycare centers), under the supervision of the relevant ministries and the WBF.

Do you believe that these cost-cutting policies will have a perverse effect on the demand represented by this already low rate of registrations for school meals and, consequently, on the supply of institutional kitchens?

If free school meals are discontinued, cost-cutting measures will further reduce the rate. Nevertheless, we want every child to eat a balanced meal at school, hot or cold, with ultra-healthy products and drinks, as mandated by the current political authorities and decree. And this must be done in the optimal conditions of a school environment.

What would be interesting to plan for the near future is to define five living spaces, one per province, for a "real-world" trial over the course of a school year and create "The Table." This would be part of a fun course on learning about healthy eating and discovering local products.

Following these five annual tests, a university evaluation, conducted at the Faculty of Gembloux for example, incorporating cost center parameters, would be analyzed in the presence of relevant professionals in the field of institutional catering. This would ultimately lead to a presentation of the study's results to the relevant ministries.

In other words, this political maneuver is being carried out tentatively and raises fears of an unprecedented decline in nutritional quality, negating five years of effort for quality hot meals?

Unfortunately, it's too late! Fifty years ago, in institutional kitchens, we had 300 products to prepare our school meals, and that was for all four seasons. The choice of food has become global. In 2025, after five decades, we won't have three hundred products, but 100,000. And there are no more seasons.

We still buy excellent food products, but the choice is so large in quantity that often the cook makes the wrong choice, which he does not want to admit or cannot admit, because of a lack of knowledge of the mandatory food technical data sheets.

Let's not be tempted by beauty, but by quality. Packaging is often dangerous because of its aesthetic appeal. Beware of this cosmetic approach to products. And as for quality, let's not even go there. We ration, we slice, we trim, we mince. One wonders if it isn't intentional.

As far as colours, preservatives, antioxidants, stabilizers, thickeners, emulsifiers, gelling agents, sweeteners, flavour enhancers, acidifiers are concerned, we are more than well served.

Finished and substitute products created and produced by manufacturers must exist but cannot be widely used in schools. Yet, at the school level, local, short-supply-chain, regional, organic products represent barely 3% of all school production in Wallonia-Brussels.

It will take decades to rebuild our food heritage in the face of the gradual introduction of globalized products.

Do you believe that, beyond the social implications, political leaders are not taking into account the fixed costs (related to operating costs, personnel, logistics, and the prices of quality products) and are minimizing the economic repercussions on the institutional catering sector?

We have no intention of criticizing politicians, whoever they may be. They make decisions, but often with a short-term perspective. In institutional catering, there are 30 cost centers used to calculate the final cost of a school meal. Food itself represents only one of these 30 cost centers. The cost of food accounts for approximately 20%. Therefore, a precise, case-by-case analysis is necessary to understand and interpret the figures.

Should we share kitchens like our French, German or Dutch neighbors? Yes, but while accepting the advantages and disadvantages of this sharing.

Let us take this specific example: combining the school sector with the hospital sector, with regard to the production and delivery of school meals, appears to us politically and organizationally as a strategic error.

Isn't this reduction in resources, in essence, a political admission that the WBF no longer considers the fight against school food insecurity as a structural investment, but rather as a mere expendable budgetary adjustment variable? With the aggravating circumstance of harming the mission and management of school kitchens?

We believe that the political decree promoting free meals distributed to children in certain schools, enabling them to receive a balanced and hot meal, is a strong decision that will help them eat healthily. From a humanitarian perspective, this decree is certainly commendable, but from a budgetary standpoint, was the Wallonia-Brussels Federation properly advised? We have our doubts.

It is necessary to hold discussions with all relevant professional stakeholders to conduct a thorough assessment of the current food and non-food situation in all schools. A precise inventory of the existing situation is essential. All organizational steps must be clearly defined to determine the necessary budget adjustments. Sound management of school kitchens requires determining, upstream, the value of all cost centers associated with school catering before implementing downstream actions for primary school children.

What responsibilities should institutional kitchens tolerate, assume, or refuse?

The answer is simple yet complex. No collective kitchen can generate supplementary or additional meals without defining the concept of a project.

To successfully complete the project, we must write up our plan and submit it to the relevant provincial unit of the Belgian Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain (AFSCA). We must then draw up plans and specify the flow patterns. After AFSCA approval, the project must be validated by the governing board of your school's organizing authority.

We need to create a code of ethics, establish a HACCP team (a preventative method for ensuring food safety by identifying and controlling risks throughout the production chain) supervised by the establishment's management. We also need to plan for staff safety, general hygiene, and food safety, and set up a highly competent and diverse advisory committee… We are convinced that the training framework for institutional kitchens must be updated.

How to adapt in order to meet the current and future realities of the institutional catering sector?

Two orientations need to be redefined: the HORECA sector, which does not concern the FCCWB, and the HORECO sector (hospitals, company restaurants, rest and care homes, amusement parks, prisons, school sectors) which concerns us at the FCCWB.

The turnover of the HORECA sector represents 10% of national food consumption; HORECO, 5%. The remaining 85% goes to supermarkets, food SMEs, wholesalers, and other retailers.

Our vision is that it is necessary to create two separate educational tracks: one for the hospitality sector (HORECA, 350,000 jobs) and one for the retail sector (HORECO, 30,000 jobs). The goal is that lasting systemic change can only be achieved with a skilled, professional, up-to-date, and high-performing workforce. The hospitality sector encompasses nearly 20 different professions. Let's be visionary.

So what can be done to redefine the priorities of public action in a "visionary" way, so that collective kitchens meet the needs of these particular populations?

School meals are not the immediate future of institutional catering. We absolutely must prioritize childcare facilities and our senior citizens.

One of the major projects for the future of institutional catering will be the delivery of meals to homes 7 days a week, including breakfast, a ready-to-heat lunch, and an evening meal. This will take the form of a "health kit," developed in collaboration with general practitioners.

We believe that the WBF has major projects to rebuild and update, and this must be done collaboratively with the relevant stakeholders on the ground. Let's get to work!