Stanford University
OP-7: Food and Beverage Purchasing

R&DE Stanford Dining has a full-time Sustainable Food Program Manager who runs the Sustainable Food Program. The Sustainable Food Program is a collaborative effort that includes strategic partnerships with vendors and
suppliers, students, staff, faculty and other campus stakeholders.

The Sustainable Food Program Manager works with the Food Steering Committee to identify, research, and source new sustainable items. All product categories are included in this work. Recent projects of the Food Steering Committee include sourcing antibiotic-free chicken, local and organic milk, grass-fed beef, local and organic rice, organic lentils, sustainable fish, and local and organic produce, including “Deliciously Imperfect” produce.

The Sustainable Food Program Manager maintains Stanford Dining’s sustainability purchasing guidelines and analyzes purchases to ensure they conform to the guidelines.

Serving seasonal, sustainable, healthy and culturally diverse food, R&DE offers options and accommodates food preferences for a diverse student, faculty, staff, and visitor population. R&DE is committed to meaningfully participating in the education of the world’s future leaders by sharing knowledge and creating awareness of food culture, food systems, and food production. R&DE serves foods that are grown using sound environmental practices that encourage biodiversity with earth friendly systems from farms that respect the land and are committed to ensuring our future generation's food supply without compromise.

Below is a list of R&DE Stanford Dining’s sustainable purchasing commitments; these are products that we always buy.

• Preference for organic and local products
• Organic and local produce direct from Pie Ranch
• Organic and local produce direct from O’Donohue Family Stanford Educational Farm
• Organic and local “imperfect” produce from Coke Farm (hub of 40 smaller farms)
• Organic produce from the dining hall gardens
• Organic apples (#1 on the Dirty Dozen)
• Organic and local spring mix, herbs, and chopped romaine
• Organic and local tofu
• Fair Trade certified coffee (regular and decaf)
• Organic and Fair Trade certified tea
• Cage-free & Salmon Safe eggs (all eggs- liquid and whole)
• Monterey Bay Aquarium “good” and “best” choice seafood only
• Wild Alaskan salmon direct from Taku River Reds family fishery
• 100% grass-fed and antibiotic-free beef
• 100% antibiotic-free chicken
• Pork butt from pigs that have been raised outdoors on a vegetarian diet with no antibiotics
• Organic, pasture-raised, and local milk (all but chocolate milk)

R&DE Stanford Dining uses an enterprise software called EATEC to order products and generate reports. Our Sustainable Food Program Manager also uses purchasing reports from the suppliers to conduct the inventory. The inventory submitted is for calendar year 2015. Miles are calculated directly from the farm, not the distributor.

There are a number of items that we are not able to include in the tally for this credit but are included in the R&DE Stanford Dining Sustainable Purchasing Standards. This includes our pork from Niman Ranch, which is a group of family farmers who treat their animals humanely and do not use antibiotics. They are not third party certified due to costs. Similarly, we now purchase 100% antibiotic free chicken, some of which was purchased locally from a small company that was recently acquired by a larger chicken company, which does not allow them to be counted. Finally, our beef is grass-fed, but is not certified, so we are not able to count that either.

We feel that non-community based companies can still be sustainable, and that this is in fact vital for growing a sustainable food system.

Please note that many of Stanford's large purchases that are considered sustainable internally do not qualify under the STARS 2.1 structure because they are not third-party certified, such as Niman Ranch pork, antibiotic free chicken, and grass-fed/antibiotic free chicken.