Trent U Now Supports Local Dairy
Posted: May 20, 2015
Categories: GoodFoodBites / News from Sustain Members
Shared via Farms at Work.
DFO & FAW collaborate to allow for easier on-campus access to local dairy products
Trent University was ahead of the pack when they put out a Request for Proposals in 2013 for a five year food services contract that made increasing procurement of local food a priority.
The contract was awarded in 2014 to Chartwells Education Dining Services, and specified that 50% of the food would be Ontario-grown, 35% of which must be sourced within 250km, and 2% of which must be sourced from within the Kawartha Region.
With limited direct connections to local producers, Chartwells General Manager Carolyn Bennett reached out to Pat Learmonth, Director of Farms at Work (FAW), for assistance. Farms at Work is a non-profit charitable project of Tides Canada Initiatives, with connections out into the local food community across east central Ontario.
Bennett and Learmonth toured farms and dairy processing plants over the course of the fall, and talked about the challenges and opportunities for institutional procurement. One challenge was verification of the origin of the products, which the University would need to satisfy the contractual requirement. After visiting local processors, Kawartha Dairy and Empire Cheese, Chartwells was interested in including dairy products in the local food mix. The real challenge would be determining precisely how far the raw milk had travelled before arriving at these local plants.
Enter Dairy Farmers of Ontario (DFO), the provincial-level commodity organization that oversees the supply management system for cow milk in Ontario. Under this system, raw milk is picked up from the farms and delivered in the most efficient way available to a processing plant. As a result DFO has the computerized delivery and traceability data available that would support verification of origin.
Read the full story about this exciting development on the Farms at Work website.
