Simca Horwitz, Massachusetts Farm to School Project
Posted on January 14, 2016
Case Study Series Highlights Local Seafood at Colleges, Schools & a Hospital in New England
Photos: Chef Wendy and Frances Moore Lappe teaching students during a cooking class on campus (left). Chef Donnie preparing the lobster for a lobster bake on campus (top). Photos courtesy of Colby College.
Note: Want to help support local seafood? Share these Sea to Campus Case Studies with your colleagues, friends and partners! We've made it easy by providing sample language (see below) for sharing this series on Facebook and Twitter.
At institutions throughout New England, dining staff are beginning to look to the sea as another source for local foods. Institutions from across health care, colleges & universities, and K-12 school systems are incorporating locally caught seafood into their meals for a variety of reasons and through a variety of procurement models. FINE set out to create a series of case studies that explores exactly how and why institutions are serving up locally caught seafood. We also asked what lessons these sea to institution pioneers might have to share with institutions that haven’t yet developed local seafood programs.
These case studies highlight models from three higher education institutions, two public K-12 schools, and one hospital. The following institutions represent small and large sites, rural and urban locations, and the two primary management structures (self-operated dining programs and programs contracted with a food service management company):
While the institutional demographics may be different, the institutions themselves cited many of the same reasons for initiating a local seafood program. These include:
Meeting sustainability goals
Responding to customer interest and engagement
Learning more about sustainable and local options from existing or potential vendors
Supporting local fisheries with institutional dollars
Providing healthier protein options on the menu
Providing new menu options
Higher-quality, fresh products
Providing good educational opportunities for customers
Many of these institutions noted that the price per pound of seafood is more expensive than other protein options, yet they want to support and grow their use of these products due to the other reasons listed above.
Choosing Seafood
Institutions use a variety of criteria to determine whether a particular product meets their local and/or sustainable seafood criteria. In several cases they have chosen to rely on third party certifiers such as the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) or Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). Harvard is the only institution which has worked with a seafood expert to develop their own set of criteria for evaluating a fish purchase. While this criteria includes existing certifications such as GMRI and MSC, it is not limited to these criteria. Most of the profiled institutions have chosen not to fully certify their own operations. Colby College has been licensed by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute to serve Gulf of Maine Responsibly Harvested products for the 2015-16 Academic Year.
In order to source traceable product (either to a particular fishery or directly to a boat) several institutions began working with new distributors. Their existing seafood suppliers were often not providing them with the level of traceability they needed to evaluate their purchases. These case studies demonstrate a strong market for products that are traceable to the boat and highlight the small number of distributors providing this service.
The Impact
Each of these institutions sees opportunities for growth in their seafood programs. The percent of their purchases (for those that are tracking) coming from regional sources ranges from 25% all the way to 100%. At some of the larger institutions this can represent tens of thousands of pounds annually. If more institutions follow the lead of these seafood pioneers and commit to sourcing sustainable, regionally caught seafood, they could provide significant economic support to New England fishermen and fishing communities.
Do you know an institution that’s doing great work with local seafood? If so, contact us at riley@farmtoinstitution.org.
More Information
FINE’s Farm & Sea to Campus Project aims to increase the amount of local food served in colleges and universities. Get connected with the New England Farm and Sea to Campus Network by visiting www.farmtoinstitution.org/farm-college.
Additional resources about New England fisheries are available at the following links:
*The Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance (NAMA) has helped propel the seafood to institution movement in our region. NAMA first began to focus on shifting consumer seafood purchasing decisions as a means of broadening the base of support for the ecological role of community based fishermen in 2008. They began by creating the community supported fishery (CSF) model, including Cape Ann Fresh Catch which is part of the supply chain in two of these case studies (Gloucester and Boston Medical Center). After the CSF movement gained momentum, they began to work with Health Care Without Harm to shift their hospital purchasing policies, encouraging them to go deeper than the seafood certifications and lists they were already using and embrace other values their institutions had articulated about their land based food procurement. There work has since expanded to higher education and they remain a key force in this movement.
Network Partners: We put together these sample posts and tweets to make it easy for you to announce this new series of sustainable seafood case studies.
Facebook Post: Local seafood is the focus of a new six-part case study series just released by @Farm to Institution New England featuring @Harvard University, the @University of New Hampshire, @Colby College, @Gloucester High School, Seabrook School and @Boston Medical Center. As a whole, these six institutions purchase more than 200,000 pounds of local or sustainable seafood a year. And we're not just talking about cod. These dining halls serve everything from pollock, hake, skates, redfish, cape shark, haddock, sole and flounder to shrimp, salmon, mussels, crab, lobster, scallops and oysters. #localseafood #knowyourfisherman
