About Dining Services
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Local and Organic Foods on the Menu at Williams
February 2, 2005
Williams Dining Services is intensifying its efforts to purchase local, organic products from area farmers and manufactures continuing its efforts to support sustainability. After a successful launch of an all natural beef and hormone free dairy program, along with a thriving composting initiative, the rural College located in the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts decided to further promote it's sustainability program by introducing many more locally and/or organically produced items to the Williams community.
With close to 2000 students on 5 different meal plans, the Dining Services administration felt it most important to become leaders in environmental stewardship while offering the most healthful food in the region. After a successful launch of a dairy program in the fall of 2004, switching all milk consumed on campus to milk from a local dairy farm (Highlawn Farms) that produces dairy from grass fed, hormone free cows, and piloting a beef program from locally grown grass fed cattle, the College set it's sights on more ambitious goals: to slowly change as many products as possible to local and organic or natural products. "It was a natural course of action, since this is what our students want and have asked for" commented Bob Volpi, Director of Dining Services.
Returning to the dairy front, Williams struck a deal to use only a local ice cream producer in nearby Manchester, Vermont for their frozen dairy needs; use only local produce when available, and have added, or are adding an array of other local and organic products from honey, cereal, beans and grains to pastas and sauces. "We feel that by putting our land to work, the College is being a good neighbor to farmers in the region, obtaining the healthiest nutritious food while teaching the students to be responsible stewards of the environment" said Mark Petrino, Associate Director of Dining Services. "A recent study by The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture says that under the conventional system many food items travel an average of 1500 miles from where they are grown to where they are purchased. We pride ourselves on the idea of actually knowing where our food comes from and how it is treated before our students consume it" added Petrino. Freshness is the key to many of the choices Williams Dining makes, "while many campus programs are shifting towards branded concepts like Taco Bell and Starbucks, we have made a conscious decision to look for fresh, local product free of unnatural additives" reflected Volpi.
The ultimate goal for Williams Dining Services is to have students able to complete four years of study at the College while eating nothing but local and organic food, deriving a complete diet full of all the minerals, vitamins and proteins they need. Petrino summed up "If the students carry on examples we have set by eating in a more sophisticated, healthful manner while being responsible stewards of the land, I would say we have done our job."
Some of the local companies Williams Dining Services is currently partnering with are: Highlawn Farms; New England Livestock Alliance; Wilcox Farms; Black River Farms; The Western Massachusetts Manufacturing Alliance; Northeast Organic Farmers Association; Peace Valley Farm; along with other local honey and wholesale purveyors.