In July 2003, the Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA) became the administering agency of the federal child nutrition programs, which provide funding and nutritional guidelines to Texas public schools. On March 3, 2004, the TDA issued the Texas Public School Nutrition Policy, which supplements the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s existing Federal Nutrition Policy for Public Schools.
Over the past few months, many parents, teachers, principals, food service directors, and school administrators have called my office with questions on how this policy will affect our current school business. With such a major change in the nutrition policy, it is important to detail how this change will affect Lone Star Ice Cream and what changes we are making to become 100% compliant.
Lone Star Ice Cream is extremely supportive of any effort to improve the nutritious offerings in public schools. We have always been 100% compliant with the USDA regulations and have never sold any Foods of Minimal Nutritional Value in schools. The new regulations impose stricter standards, however these standards are attainable.
We have been successfully working with all of our manufacturers on product sizes and nutrition content. I am pleased to say that we will have a wonderful lineup, and all of our products will meet the nutrition and portion size limits.
On Thursday April, 15, 2004, a new Joint Interim Committee on Nutrition and Health in Public Schools met at the Capitol in Austin. TDA Commissioner Susan Combs, as well as other legislative and public members, sit on the committee. As you can imagine, the majority of the time was spent on the ramifications of the new policy. After the hearing, I was able to spend some time with Commissioner Combs and John Perkins, TDA Assistant Commissioner for Food and Nutrition. Both seem very willing to work with us on specific issues to make the transition a bit easier. For instance, we have petitioned for three of our fruit juice products that do not meet the portion size limits. One of these products has already been given an exemption and I am hopeful that the others will follow shortly behind.
The goal of the new policy and the new committee is in no way directed to exclude vending machines from schools. Vending machines are sophisticated pieces of equipment that do serve a good purpose. Unfortunately this technology has gotten a bad rap for some of the products that have gone into them. By meeting the standards required by this new policy, we feel that our service combines technology with providing the consumer a healthier product.
If you have any question regarding the new policy or how our products are affected, please do not hesitate to call me at (888) 683-3240
Thanks for your interest,
Taylor Wynn
