McGill
Local Food Days
The first Local Food Day of the year was a fabulous success! Members of Gardner Hall’s Green Living-Learning Community came out to volunteer with us, along with some other amazing MFSP volunteers, and shared their enthusiasm (and loads of free Macdonald Campus apples, courtesy of McGill Food and Dining Services and Aramark) with hundreds of residence students. Check out GLLC member Justin Koh’s incredible blog for more information and some wonderful pictures of us all helping out.
Coming up– Pumpkins and Squash! Catch us in cafs from October 24-28th.
Once a month each residence dining hall will have a Local Food Day. On Local Food Days, produce, meat, dairy, eggs, and grain products which are in season are purchased locally by McGill Food and Dining Services. Local is defined as preference to under 200km to a maximum of 500 km. Local Food Day will feature one main event each month, organized by the McGill Food Systems Project, McGill Food and Dining Services, and the Floor Fellow Local Food Days team.
Local Food Days have been a big success, and we’ve got even bigger plans for our third year!
Local Food Days offer
• An opportunity for students and staff to learn about the availability of regional food and Quebec’s cultural food heritage through seasonal menus
• A place to celebrate community initiatives and share perspectives surrounding sustainable food through workshops and events
• A place for students to ask questions about getting involved in the sustainable food movement at McGill through their university classes and various campus groups
• A platform to test student research on supply chain sustainability, local and sustainable products and to develop relationships with alternative suppliers.
Local Food Days are open to the entire campus, so check out the monthly schedule, and make sure to stop by the dining halls for a local breakfast, lunch and/or dinner on the dates listed.
Find them at:
Monday-New Rez Hall
Tuesday- Carrefour-Sherbrooke
Wednesday- RVC
Thursday-BMH
Friday- Douglas
Meatless Mondays
Every first Monday of the month, students in each of the 5 residential cafs are encouraged to become aware of the benefits of a meatless diet. “Meatless Mondays” arose-and was endorsed by 20 public health schools- in 2003 as an effort by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to reduce risk of preventable disease and improve individuals’ carbon footprints. See the Meatless Mondays Canada website for more information.
Upper Residence’s Green Living-Learning Community
The “LLC” is a community of first -year students living in McGill’s Upper Residences who have self-identified, prior to arriving at University, as being interested in sustainability initiatives within Rez and also within McGill. The 2011-2012 LLC members will become instrumental in such endeavours as Local Food Days, providing a volunteer base of first-year students to deepen the connection between farmer, student and meal. (More info coming soon!)
McGill Food & Dining Services
One of the priorities of the McGill Food Systems Project is to institutionalize sustainable eating habits through a close partnership with McGill Food & Dining Services. MFSP has been instrumental in working with Food & Dining to implement Local Food Days and increase local, sustainable food purchasing guidelines (as of spring 2011!).
The following is taken from McGill Food & Dining Service’s Sustainable Food Purchasing Website: it is a condensed list of the commitments that McGill Food & Dining Services has made, along with Aramark, a sub-contracted operator of several McGill meal spaces (note: Aramark’s contractual commitments are not represented below in their entirety.)
Sustainable Seafood: No serving of red-listed seafood, according to SeaChoice’s standards.
Whole Flour and Grains: Baking only with Québec Vrai organic flour and locally milled grains.
Whole Eggs: Only whole eggs from free-run chickens on Québec farms.
Coffee: Locations serve only fair-trade (mostly organic) coffee or equivalent.
McGill Food & Dining Services have implemented a 500km definition of local foods and source from within the circle indicated below:
(http://www.mcgill.ca/foodservices/socialresponsibility/sustainablefoodpurchasing/)
