On Monday April 3, the University of California Berkeley became the first college in the United States to offer students an officially certified organic salad bar.
UC Berkeley’s Crossroads dining commons is the first college dining hall to receive organic certification from the California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF), a Santa Cruz-based trade association that certifies restaurants and processors to standards outlined by the USDA National Organic Program.
By spring 2007, all four of the dining halls managed by Cal Dining, one of the campus food services, will offer certified organic salad bars.
“This is huge, and it’s certainly the mark of the beginning of a trend in food service toward organic,” said Jake Lewin, director of marketing and international programs at CCOF, the Santa Cruz-based organization that issued the landmark organic certification.
“While there are numerous colleges and other institutions that serve some organic food, until now, none has made the leap to being certified,” he said. “What Cal Dining is doing points the way for other colleges and institutions to go.”
Shawn LaPean, director of Cal Dining, said that going organic was a challenge.
“We wanted to incorporate organic products into our program because it’s the right thing to do for our community, and our customers were asking for it,” he said. “But the student dining committee wouldn’t support an action that might increase room-and-board fees.” To hold down the higher costs that many organic items command, Cal Dining negotiated with its vendors and struck a deal with a local salad dressing company owned by a UC Berkeley alumna.
Chuck Davies, Cal Dining’s assistant director and executive chef, spearheaded the drive toward organic.
“At first we thought, ‘Okay, we can buy some organic things,'” Davies said. “But that just didn’t feel like it had enough integrity. There are standards that hold manufacturers and producers to a different level. My feeling was that people who serve the products should be held to standards as well.”
Davies is referring to the standards set forth in the National Organic Program, issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2002. Under the program, any food labeled organic must meet strict requirements. Regulations also apply to retail food establishments that serve organic food.
Most of the federal regulations are designed to maintain “organic integrity” of products from the time they arrive on the loading dock to the moment they are offered for consumption. The rules are so exacting that Davies quickly concluded that if Cal Dining was going to offer a line of organic food, he’d need a separate kitchen. Fortunately, a small stand-alone kitchen already existed in one corner of Crossroad’s food preparation area.
In September 2005, Davies hired Lorraine Aguilar, a senior in UC Berkeley’s Nutritional Science and Toxicology department, to help complete CCOF’s extensive application, and the application was submitted in December. After a review, an inspection and requests for a few revisions, CCOF awarded the official stamp of organic certification to the salad bar kitchen on March 21.
“Between the training and the paperwork, the fact of the matter is that organic certification for a restaurant or food facility isn’t easy,” Lewin says. “The bottom line is that Crossroads now has a stringent system for ensuring that there is no commingling of organic products with non-organic products. It’s all about making sure the end-product really is organic.”
Organic certification is just one of Cal Dining’s many green business practices. Since it opened in January 2003, Crossroads has been a showcase of green design and management. In 2004, it became the first campus facility certified as a Bay Area Green business by Alameda County officials. Natural lighting and energy-efficient fixtures cut electricity consumption. Low-flow water faucets conserve water. Tables are cleaned with cloth instead of paper. Excess food is donated to a local homeless shelter, and food scraps are picked up by a local company to be turned into garden compost.
CCOF, a nonprofit organization formed by a group of grassroots activist farmers in 1973, is the oldest and largest organic certifier in North America. It is one of 56 companies in the United States that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has designated as accredited certifying agents for organic products and services.
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