University of New Hampshire
OP-7: Food and Beverage Purchasing

Through the Local Harvest Initiative, UNH Dining is committed to serving locally, regionally, and sustainably grown, produced, and manufactured items to the greatest extent possible. Many of these items are included regularly in the dining halls and campus retail outlets, and others are purchased for special events such as the annual Local Harvest Feast and Sustainable Seafood Dinners. The sustainability commitment of UNH Dining is part of the university’s broader Food & Society Initiative, which commits UNH to being a sustainable food community that promotes healthy food systems from farm to fork to health and nutrition outcomes. Serving locally and regionally grown, produced, and manufactured items ensures that the food served is the freshest possible while helping to support our local economy, a vibrant regional agricultural infrastructure, and a healthy food system. We look for farms, fisheries, and food producers or manufacturers located within a 250 mile radius from UNH. Additional criteria that UNH Dining considers in its purchasing decisions include: USDA Certified Organic: Examples of USDA Certified Organic foods served on campus include Stonyfield Farms yogurt, Sunrise Farm yogurt, Grandy Oats granola, and Soy Boy tofu. Fair Trade Certified: Examples of Fair Trade Certified foods served on campus include Green Mountain coffee and Starbucks coffee Certified Humane: UNH serves Nellie's Nest eggs on campus, which are Certified Humane. Seafood Certifications: UNH Dining utilizes a variety of criteria and third-party labeling programs when sourcing their seafood, including the Gulf of Maine Responsibly Harvested program for verification of locally sourced species such as mussels and redfish, Marine Stewardship Council certification and Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) for farmed species such as salmon, and purchasing directly from local fleets when possible. They also use Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch as a reference. For the locally sourced products, UNH Dining is able to provide educational information to their customers about the species that are being served such as scallops, Atlantic Pollock or skate wing and their origins in the Gulf of Maine. Lastly, as a result of student engagement, UNH signed onto a set of Slow Fish Principles in 2014 that were developed along with the international Slow Food organization. The principles help guide their seafood procurement towards supporting local fishermen, underutilized species, traceability, and education of their customers.

The full record of purchases for UNH Dining for fiscal year 2016 was included in this analysis. As a result, seasonal variation is accounted for. Interns and staff at the Sustainability Institute at UNH worked with UNH Dining to collect expenditure data. Interns researched the sustainability practices of the vendors to determine the percentage of purchases that are local and community-based (within a 250-mile radius), USDA Organic, Fair Trade, humane (from cage-free eggs to sustainable seafood), vegetarian-fed, hormone-free, and otherwise sustainably grown, processed or harvested. The inventory we reported only includes the products purchased during FY16 that meet sustainability criteria.

UNH Dining currently purchases approximately 16% of products as local/sustainable. 5.3% of UNH's food purchases are third party verified, 3.5% are local and community-based, and 7.0% have other sustainability attributes. UNH's third-party verified products include organic, fair trade, humane, and sustainable seafood certifications. The products cover a range of food categories, including coffee, eggs, seafood, dairy, vegetables, meat, and grains. UNH Dining sources local and community-based from the New England region. Most of these products are dairy, fruits, and vegetables. Our submission was prepared using the complete food purchase records from FY16. We identified third party verified products, and we contacted local vendors to confirm that they met the criteria for local & community based products. Our data set reports only the sustainable purchases at UNH. For more information about UNH Dining Services, see: http://www.unh.edu/dining/sustainable-efforts http://www.unh.edu/dining/community/about.html