Meat products (2020)

Response

1. What was the total cost, in GBP, of meat products (both raw ingredients and finished products) purchased by the House of Commons and its venues over the last three years?
   Some information is held by the House of Commons.
   The amount spent by the House on both meat and meat products, since the start of the 2017 financial year.
   ‘Meat’ includes ingredients such as chicken breasts and beef mince, while ‘meat products’ includes finished products with some meat content such as sandwiches, sausage rolls and scotch eggs.

1. Please also provide the country of origin of these products if the budget of the request allows.
   Some information is held by the House of Commons in relation to your request.

The House publishes information about how it operates its Catering Service in an environmentally and socially responsible manner, including the origin of almost all meat products.

Whilst the House of Commons holds this information, it is also already from a public source. This information is therefore exempt from disclosure in accordance with section 21(1) and (2)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), which removes a public authority from the obligation to provide access to information which is already in the public domain.  This is an absolute exemption and the public interest test does not apply.

However, it may help you to know that information relevant to your request can be found on page 5 of the ‘Responsible Catering’ document on the Parliamentary website.

It may also help you to know that, for the remaining meat products, the House only sources products that meet or exceed UK or equivalent standards of production. Although we are able to trace the origin of any given food product through its supplier, we do not ourselves hold recorded information about the particular country of origin for each and every product.