The fall of Can Arabí: the company that managed the most school canteens loses all its centers

PalmaCan Arabí will not manage any public school canteen this academic year. The company, which provided service to 44 centers until last year, has been left out of the new contracts that the Ministry of Education is awarding these days. The outcome comes after the Ministry of Health provisionally suspended the activity of the Can Arabí central kitchen last June due to several breaches in food safety matters. Education confirms that the suspension from Health has been decisive in removing the company from the new contracts. “Health suspended Can Arabí as an operator at the time. This allowed Education to restrict all contracts,” explain sources from the department. According to Education, the new services are being awarded to other companies these days and “none of them is Can Arabí”.

The decision puts an end to Can Arabí's presence in the public school canteen service after years of managing a significant portion of the centers. In June, the suspension of their central kitchen forced the Department of Education to urgently reorganize nearly 2,000 daily meals corresponding to 33 centers, with only nine days left until the end of the school year. Now, with the new school year about to begin, that emergency solution has turned into a structural change. The suspension was not due to a single incident. As ARA Balears already explained in a scoop, Can Arabí's central kitchen had for years accumulated inspections, files, and sanctions for food safety deficiencies related to hygiene, temperature control, food preparation and cleaning, staff training, and the prevention of cross-contamination.

Sources familiar with the file point out, however, a structural problem: the capacity of the facilities. Thus, the technicians considered that the kitchen did not have the necessary dimensions to assume the volume of menus. The company had adopted measures to adapt, such as the acquisition of devices to control the temperature of the food, but the technicians considered that they did not solve the underlying problem. The precautionary suspension came after a new inspection in which Health detected non-compliance in the preparation, handling, and transport of the food.

Health 'versus' Education

Precisely, the capacity of the kitchen, according to sources close to Health, would have caused part of the conflict between the two departments. While Education needed to guarantee the dining service, Health technicians considered that Can Arabí could not handle that volume of work with the necessary guarantees. The same sources assert that there was "a lot of pressure" from Education for the company to be able to remain open, even though the technicians considered that the facilities were not adequate to provide service to so many dining rooms. The inspectors defended applying sanitary criteria despite these pressures. "When you see that the political pressure is scandalous, you go straight ahead: I will make the reports that I consider necessary and I will move forward," explains one of the consulted sources, who states that the Department would have tried to qualify some of the technicians' reports. According to the authorized sources consulted, the company knew that leaving it out of the game would mean a problem for the Administration: "They were acting a bit cocky," he summarizes.

Sources describe the case as an example of the difficulties faced by food safety officials in taking action against companies providing essential services. They argue that inspectors must be able to act in accordance with technical criteria and current regulations, especially when it concerns a service that affects children. Sources also recount an episode related to a child's food allergy. According to their account, a problem occurred that required professional intervention, but it did not become public. The sources do not place this episode as the direct cause of the suspension, but rather within a broader history of incidents related to food safety at the Can Arabí central kitchen. Thus, the case leaves a question on the table: how could a company that had been accumulating inspections, incidents, and sanctions for years continue to manage such an important part of the service?

Deep-rooted oligopoly

The situation also highlights the conflict that health control of an essential service can generate. Education has the duty to ensure that students have access to a canteen (especially when there are many students for whom it is the only substantial meal they have), but Health must ensure that the companies feeding them comply with food safety conditions. In the case of Can Arabí, this balance has ended up leaning towards health criteria. It remains to be seen whether the centers that were left 'orphaned' in June will fall back into the hands of some of the large canteen operators, which concentrate a good part of the service and leave out small operators more rooted in school educational projects and beloved by educational communities, who are fighting to survive with everything working against them.