Talks sparked by a plan to provide Tayside children with frozen meals were discussed behind closed doors.
Dundee City Council excluded the press and public from part of a meeting on Monday night which discussed the Tayside Meal Centre.
The plans, rubberstamped late last year, will see school meals for Dundee and Angus prepared at Tayside Contracts’ Tay Cuisine Industrial kitchen before being flash-frozen and then taken to distribution hubs before being transported to schools.
The creation of the centre is expected to save Dundee City Council £512,000 a year.
Previous discussions over the plans have been heard in public but on Monday night the policy and resources committee agreed to hold the talks in private.
Strathmartine Labour councillor Kevin Kennan suggested redundancies were due to be discussed, during the open section of the meeting.
He said: “Is item 16 [Tayside Meals Centre] being held in private because it mentions redundancies and it will save embarrassment?”
Council leader and committee convener John Alexander has since denied any reference to redundancies.
The proposals originally included Perth and Kinross but councillors there voted against the plans due to fears over job losses.
Roger Mennie, the council’s head of democratic and legal services, said the decision had been taken due to information about a private company’s finances in the report.
The Local Government (Scotland) Act states a local authority may exclude the public from a meeting during consideration of business whenever it is likely that if members of the public are present there would be disclosure of exempt information.
