Four primary schools in Belgrade have just suffered from an outbreak of food poisoning from a meal provided by a catering company, with 135 children suffering from severe stomach problems and seven briefly hospitalised (Tuesday, 3rd October). This has raised the issue of schools providing their own meals to ensure that health and safety standards are not compromised by awarding tenders to the caterer offering the cheapest meals, whatever the quality. Fortuitously for Strength2Food, this outbreak occurred the day that BSN staff Steve Quarrie and Ratko Bojovic were at a meeting in Serbia's state television organisation (RTS) discussing how RTS [...]

During a recent visit to the village school Prota Mateja Nenadović in Brankovina near Valjevo, the school principal Milica Ostojić surprised us with the news that she arranged a television interview for us (Ratko Bojović and Steve Quarrie, BSN / EUTA) on local television, Vujić TV, Valjevo. VTV is available on cable television in Serbia, and is especially watched in the wider area of ​​Valjevo. The interview will be broadcast on the evening of June 29 and will be available soon on YouTube. Milica is one of the most enterprising principals of primary schools in Serbia with many years of [...]

Steve Quarrie, the team leader of BSN, now called European Training Academy (EUTA), has recruited a team of PhD students for Strength2Food, who are eager to take part in an international research project and to start collecting and analysing real data. In total, Strength2Food has now acquired 18 young researchers, past, present and future PhD students from both Belgrade and Novi Sad, who will focus on aspects of the WP9.1 school meals pilot scheme in Serbia. Working in groups of two they will support the work currently being done by the Ministry of Education and Science (MPN) and EUTA to [...]