As philosophers and schoolchildren ponder the age-old question, 'Which came first: the chicken or the egg?,' in terms of sustainability, Dartmouth Dining Services threw its support behind the egg last year when it made the switch to using only "cage-free eggs" without making any changes in the chickens it uses.
Higher costs for more sustainably produced food remain a barrier in the College's attempts to embrace a more socially responsible menu, especially with regards to poultry, according to DDS purchasing manager Beth DiFrancesco.
"I think we're really starting to test the waters, but one of the facts of more sustainably raised food is that it costs a lot more money," DiFrancesco said. "Not just a little bit more money, a lot more money. Are we as a society -- and we includes Dartmouth students -- are we willing to pay for that?"
Stefani Ruper '10, who eats a mostly vegetarian diet, said that she would be willing to pay the extra cost for more socially responsible and sustainably raised food "because it's better for the environment," but she did say she found DDS to be "too expensive" as it is.
Last year, DDS switched to only using eggs produced by chickens living in a cage-free environment. At the time, DDS Director Tucker Rossiter estimated that the change would cost the College an additional $12,000 a year.
DiFrancesco said that DDS does want to make the shift to more sustainably raised and socially conscious food.
"We certainly do try," DiFrancesco said. "We make an effort to serve alternative items. We're offering fair trade coffee [and] we just had a meeting with a local producer and we may be able to get locally raised beef that is hormone-free, antibiotic-free and grass-fed."
DDS is interested in implementing a menu that reflects more sustainable and socially responsible food options, DiFrancesco said.
"There has to be a call from the student body. That's the driving force. We can't tell people what they want. They have to say, This is what we want, can we have this? Then we can look into answering the question."
Students who choose to eat in a socially responsible manner eat only foods that are prepared in a manner that is humane for both employees who work in the food production industry, and for the animals themselves. A socially responsible diet is dominated by large amounts of organic grains, vegetables and fruit since meat is so difficult to raise sustainably.
The majority of meat served by DDS comes from large-scale meat producers like Tyson Foods. Critics of the meat-industry often single out chicken factories for engaging in practices that are particularly inhumane.
Chickens account for more than nine-tenths of the land animals killed for human consumption in the United States, according to a report by the Humane Society of the United States on the welfare of animals in the broiler chicken industry. Broiler chickens -- chickens that are raised mainly to be eaten, not to lay eggs -- are kept in shelters called "grower houses," and these are usually packed with about 20,000 birds, giving each bird approximately 130 inches of space, according to the Humane Society report.
A normal-sized chicken requires approximately 138 square inches to stretch a wing. These conditions are characteristic of large scale producers such as Tyson Foods.
The employees who work in these grower houses spend the majority of their day surrounded by the feces and dander of the chickens and are exposed to any diseases the chickens may have. Tyson Foods recently received citations from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration after one of their workers died of asphyxiation from hydrogen sulfide, the gas created by dead carcasses. Many meat industry workers are immigrants who do not speak English and have difficulty forming unions and demanding their employers provide a safer working environment.
It is these poor conditions for animals and employees that Dartmouth Animal Welfare Group is trying to publicize.
"We are hoping to create an understanding of how food does get to people's plates so that there are more people who do not want to be contributing to it," Sonia Faruqi '07, president of DAWG, said.
Dartmouth Dining Services introduced an extensive composting system in Home Plate this year, in an attempt to make the facility more sustainable. While Benjamin Jones '10, founder of the Dartmouth Vegan Society, considers the composting station a good start, he said he would like to see the food being served in the dining halls reflect the sustainable attitude.
"I think that a great complement to Home Plate's idea of reducing waste would be to offer more vegan and vegetarian options since eating lower on the food chain reduces waste," Jones said. "While Home Plate is reducing the trash that the school makes, greater vegan and vegetarian options would reduce the school's ecological footprint through more efficient processing of the foods that students eat."
Jones also said that students who choose to eat in a socially responsible manner -- whether by eating only humanely-raised meat or by changing their diet to a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle -- can have difficulty finding dining options on campus.
He described the non-meat choices at Dartmouth as "awful" and noted that it can be even more difficult to fulfill the needs of a vegan or vegetarian diet on the weekends, when Collis Cafe and Home Plate are both closed.
