The sources do not provide a verifiable publication date. The date therefore refers to FFVR's analysis, not the source.
Public procurement can affect both food and animal welfare
The public sector purchases food on a large scale. Through procurement, public bodies can influence both which foods are bought and which requirements apply to animal husbandry and production—and therefore indirectly affect access to plant-based meals.
Public influence over the food system
Schools, hospitals and care services serve large numbers of meals every day. What they buy is largely governed by procurement documents: specifications, quality requirements and award criteria. The National Agency for Public Procurement publishes sustainability criteria that contracting organisations can use, including criteria for meat.
Not only an animal-welfare issue
Criteria concerning animal husbandry and production conditions are usually discussed as an animal-welfare issue. But they also concern how public power is exercised: which requirements are imposed, how they are justified and how compliance is monitored. In that sense, this is an area closely connected to animal law as a field of law.
The connection to vegan food
Procurement can also cover plant-based foods and meal services. If a contract does not require nutritionally adequate plant-based options, this may in practice affect what can be offered to a person who does not eat animal products, even where the service is otherwise willing to make an accommodation.
The Swedish Food Agency publishes guidance on school meals, including nutrition and meal quality, which often forms the basis for planning meal services.
FFVR analysis
FFVR does not claim that public bodies have a legal obligation to reduce their purchases of animal products. No such obligation follows from the sources cited here.
In FFVR's view, the issue requiring analysis is instead how procurement law interacts with public bodies' obligations towards individuals: whether contracts allow the accommodations a service may need to make, and how a refusal is reasoned when the practical obstacle lies in a procurement contract rather than in a legal assessment.
The issue highlights the need to analyse procurement and individual rights together, rather than separately.