St. Jerome's University commits to buying sustainable food to sell to students

St. Jerome's University has made a formal commitmentto buying more sustainable food to sell to students on its campus.

The move comes as part of anew campaignholding Canadian universities to accountwhen it comes to buying sustainable food for students.

Meal Exchange, a national charity that promotes food security and sustainability at colleges and universities, launched the Good Food Challenge on Thursday.

The challenge calls on schools to offer ecologically-sound, socially-just, community-based and humane food.

Students can see how their schools measure up to those sustainability standards, by tracking and evaluating theirpurchasing using "the Good Food Calculator."

Studentresearchers evaluate food items based on each of the standards. Foods that meet at least one standard are considered "Good Foods."The calculator thencompares the amount of money spent on Good Food,to the total budget spent on all food items.

Universities and colleges areasked to commit to making 20 per cent of their purchases meet the sustainability standards by 2025.

Students care where their food comes from

St. Jerome's University at the University of Waterloo was the first university to sign onto the commitment.

"Good Food is becoming a priority for students and campus administrators, so it's important to define exactly what that means," Anita Abraham, Meal Exchange's Executive Director, said in a media release.

"These standards are groundbreaking because, for the first time, they create a single, decisive, and comprehensive standard for Good Food on Canadian campuses."

The challenge was initially piloted on nine campuses, including St. Jerome's University.

"I think one that we learned going through this commitment with regards to trying to implement it on campus, is that students are very serious about ethical sourcing," said JaeDoncillo, the social media marketing managerfor Dana Hospitality, which runs the school's eateries.

Doncillosaid the company focuses on offering locally produced, from-scratch food on campus, and hasrecently switched suppliersso that students can know exactly where their food is coming from.He said St. Jerome's is also working to become a designated fair trade campus.

"Students today are more curious about what's going into their food and where they're getting ingredients, and they want access to that information and that's something we look forward to giving them," he said.