good_food_purchasing_vendor_resources_standards_3.0_jan_2025.pdf

Good Food Purchasing Program Vendor Resources

Welcome to the Good Food Purchasing Program!

The Center for Good Food Purchasing’s Good Food Purchasing Program provides a metric-based, flexible framework that encourages large institutions to direct their buying power toward five core values, built on a foundation of equity, accountability, and transparency:

Through the Program, the Center works with institutions to establish supply chain transparency from farm to fork, evaluate how current purchasing practices align with the Good Food Purchasing Standards, assist with goal setting, measure progress, and celebrate institutional successes in shifting towards a values-based purchasing model.

To learn more about the Center for Good Food Purchasing and the institutions participating in the Good Food Purchasing Program please visit our website.

Step 1: Get Oriented to the Program

As a food vendor, you play a critical role in the Good Food Purchasing Program – from purchasing a diversity of items that reflect the five-value framework to securing and sharing the data necessary to track progress in the program. We recommend that all vendors watch this short video overview of our program and data collection process. If you have questions about the Program, please contact us at info@goodfoodpurchasing.org.

At the core of the Program is the assessment and analysis of an institution’s food purchases. Institutions must collect line-item information about foods purchased over the course of one year, including their weights per unit of sale and their production/manufacturing location information. The Center for Good Food Purchasing team analyzes the line-item detail to determine what foods purchased qualify as “good food” under our Standards, and creates a baseline report. The baseline report supports your institutional customer to plan for its continued progress in purchasing more good food. Subsequent reports will mark progress and successes, as well as areas for additional attention.

Step 2: Understand Purchasing Records and Data Quality Needs

Vendors working with Good Food Purchasing Program-enrolled institutions are asked to provide line-item level information about foods purchased during the given reporting period, including weights per unit of sale and production/manufacturing location information.

Local Economies

Environmental Sustainability

Nutrition Animal Welfare

Valued Workforce

Equity, Accountability, and Transparency https://goodfoodpurchasing.org/ https://youtu.be/MxBBhUUi0zs https://youtu.be/MxBBhUUi0zs mailto:info@goodfoodpurchasing.org

Why is this information required?

• With weight, the analysis can compare percentages of different categories of foods and calculate environmental impact.

• With location, qualities like locality, ownership and labor conditions can be identified.

• Without either, your customers will be operating in the dark. Your collaboration and timely provision of this data will greatly affect the institution’s success in the program.

In addition to reviewing the short video in Step 1, vendors are encouraged to look at this item-level availability worksheet, which illustrates the key information the Center for Good Food Purchasing collects from all vendors that supply institutions enrolled in the Program. Datasets that are missing portions of the information illustrated in the worksheet will cause enrolled institutions to get a lower score than they would have otherwise. In some cases, the ability to provide a full dataset is a contract requirement, and the inability to provide this data may be considered a breach of contract. In all cases, a lack of complete information from the vendor will cause institutions to receive lower assessment scores. The Center encourages vendors to support their customers’ success in the Program.

Step 3: Review Priority Items Within Your Current Offerings

As part of their Good Food Purchasing Action Plan, your customer will be setting goals for their purchasing for each value category. To ensure successful implementation of the Program, be sure to familiarize your team with their goals and priorities relative to the following item/supplier attributes which may help products score in the Program:

1 such as (but not limited to) people who are (or have been) impacted by poverty and food insecurity, women, veterans, persons with disabilities, or People of Color.

Environmental Sustainability

Animal Welfare Valued Workforce Community Health and Nutrition

Local and Community-

Based Economies within 250 miles (500 miles for meat, poultry, and seafood) privately, cooperatively, or nonprofit owned and operated suppliers who have experienced negative systemic social and/or economic impacts.1 certified product* no seafood rated as “Avoid” by Seafood

Watch plant-based certified product* union contract worker owned cooperative compliance with all domestic and international labor laws including no human rights violations certified product* plant-based whole or minimally processed ingredients alternatives for red and processed meat fruit, vegetables, whole grains low sodium low/no added sugar antibiotic free/no routine antibiotics in meat and poultry products https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121XbF0RUJ4Giy5kJVQ6UsY3wolLZMgFOcKjX4xwOZmQ/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121XbF0RUJ4Giy5kJVQ6UsY3wolLZMgFOcKjX4xwOZmQ/edit?usp=sharing

Step 4: Learn More About Good Food Certifications

Third party programs and certifications are used as qualifying criteria in three out of the five value categories in the Good Food Purchasing Program. Food products with the following third-party certifications qualify at various levels.

Qualifying Certifications & Supplier Databases

A Greener World Certified Grassfed

American Grassfed Association certified

American Humane Certified Pastured Raised

Animal Welfare Approved

ANSI/LEO-4000 Gold certified

ANSI/LEO-4000 Platinum certified

Certified Humane

Certified Humane Free Range

Certified Humane Pasture Raised

Demeter Certified Biodynamic

Equitable Food Initiative certified

Fair for Life

Fairtrade USA

Fairtrade America

Environmental Sustainability Valued Workforce Animal Welfare

Has a Social Responsibility Policy*

Pasture Raised

Has a Union Contract A Worker-Owned Cooperative https://agreenerworld.org/directory/ https://www.americangrassfed.org/aga-membership/producer-members/ http://humaneheartland.org/humane-certified-producers https://agreenerworld.org/certifications/animal-welfare-approved/ http://www.leonardoacademy.org/services/standards/agstandard.html http://www.leonardoacademy.org/services/standards/agstandard.html https://certifiedhumane.org/farm-profiles/ https://www.aspca.org/shopwithyourheart/consumer-resources/shop-your-heart-brand-list?ms=MP_PMK_ShopWithYourHeart&initialms=MP_PMK_ShopWithYourHeart&gclid=Cj0KCQjwmIuDBhDXARIsAFITC_4j83rHVgxDg62OCif6dP4vHFAa0rp76TFDr0jmx4XGJGmrvRjTJlkaAk9oEALw_wcB https://www.aspca.org/shopwithyourheart/consumer-resources/shop-your-heart-brand-list?ms=MP_PMK_ShopWithYourHeart&initialms=MP_PMK_ShopWithYourHeart&gclid=Cj0KCQjwmIuDBhDXARIsAFITC_4j83rHVgxDg62OCif6dP4vHFAa0rp76TFDr0jmx4XGJGmrvRjTJlkaAk9oEALw_wcB http://www.biodynamicfood.org/ https://equitablefood.org/efi-certified-farms/ https://www.fairforlife.org/pmws/indexDOM.php?client_id=fairforlife&page_id=certprod&lang_iso639=en https://www.fairtradecertified.org/products?gclid=Cj0KCQjwmIuDBhDXARIsAFITC_61o4D-Xw39dB3oB-ZI08IsYtVR0afu_yK6MAHwl2hhy4zRAuga1qkaAnwKEALw_wcB https://www.fairtradeamerica.org/shop-fairtrade/fairtrade-products/

Food Alliance certified

Food Justice Certified by the Agricultural Justice Project

Global Animal Partnership Step 1, 2

Global Animal Partnership Step 3

Global Animal Partnership Step 4+

LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming)

Marine Stewardship Council certified

Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch “Best” to “Avoid” Choice

PCO 100% Grassfed

Pesticide-free (grower-signed affidavit)1

Protected Harvest certified

Salmon Safe

Supplier has a Social Responsibility Policy.2

Sustainably Grown certified

Supplier is a workers-owned cooperative.

Suppler has a union contract with employees.

USDA Organic

1 Distributor provides grower-signed affidavit verifying that produce has been grown without the use of pesticides and all neonicotinoids, and the affidavit is accompanied by a site visit from institution or community partner.

2 Social responsibility policy must include (1) union or non-poverty wages, (2) respect for freedom of association and collective bargaining, (3) safe and healthy working conditions, (4) proactive policy on preventing sexual harassment and assault, (5) prohibition of child labor, as defined by ILO and at least one additional employment benefit such as: employee-paid health insurance, paid sick days, profit-sharing with all employees.

http://foodalliance.org/info-commercial-food-buyers/ https://www.agriculturaljusticeproject.org/en/learn-more/ https://www.aspca.org/shopwithyourheart/consumer-resources/certified-farms-state https://www.aspca.org/shopwithyourheart/consumer-resources/certified-farms-state https://www.aspca.org/shopwithyourheart/consumer-resources/certified-farms-state https://leafuk.org/supplying/leaf-marque https://www.msc.org/en-us/standards-and-certification/the-msc-standards https://www.seafoodwatch.org/recommendations https://paorganic.org/ https://gfpp.box.com/s/x83dombxvhpykvttbzod0f8brnkqp4ft https://www.protectedharvest.org/certification-labels/ https://salmonsafe.org/buy-salmon-safe/ https://www.scsglobalservices.com/services/sustainably-grown-certification https://www.usworker.coop/member-directory/ https://www.osha.gov/pls/imis/establishment.html https://organic.ams.usda.gov/integrity/