Please help us remove a red tape blocker that means NHS frontline heroes in 73 hospitals are denied the truly nutritious food they deserve.

At The Bear Kitchen, we're on a mission to change the world, by changing the way we eat. Like many other small business, we were thrown into a storm when the pandemic hit. All of our business evaporated.
 
Instead of going into hibernation, we decided that, right now, changing the world, meant to help the best we can during this unprecedented crisis. We started delivering free meals to NHS front-line heroes in local Hospitals in Tower Hamlets.
 
The quality of our free meals got noticed and Bear Kitchen  was offered a contract to provide nutritious food to our front-line heroes as part of charity Meals for the NHS.  We’ve been a registered food business with Tower Hamlets council since May 2019.
 
This would have allowed us to continue sending food made with healthy ingredients to the NHS and other vulnerable groups.
 

And now for the red tape. We cannot start work until we are given the required certificate by the Food Standards Agency (FSA). That’s perfectly reasonable – we’ve been asking for one for over 9 months. Now the FSA say they cannot visit our kitchen because of Covid-19 and are unwilling to do a virtual visit.
 

In this time of crisis, across the country individuals, businesses and the Government are doing extraordinary things to support the NHS. The NHS is carrying out virtual diagnosis and delivering therapy virtually too. If they can do that to save our lives and keep us healthy, why can’t the FSA act virtually too so the NHS can be fed proper food.
  

The CEO of the FSA says: "…the FSA has also taken action to ensure that non-essential activities can be deprioritised, so that critical food safety duties can be carried out.” Surely enabling us to feed our frontline NHS heroes is critical food safety! 
 We need a physical or virtual visit organised immediately to ensure that we can start to deliver nutritious meals to NHS workers in 73 London hospitals.
 
So please sign our petition to get the FSA to carry out virtual certification visits now.