Dear President Lambert,

We are students from Amy Glaser’s winter term Critical Thinking class. Throughout the course we have been asked to think critically about the decisions we make in our day to day lives. One such decision is what we choose to eat every day. For most of us, we rely upon dining halls to supply sustenance for us and consume what is provided without necessarily thinking as to where it comes from.  While thinking critically about this decision, questions have arisen in regards to the food on campus.

While visiting the Aramark website we realized that, even though they promote sustainable agriculture, we suspect that many of their claims are unsubstantiated. After calling an Aramark, we spoke to a female respondent who stated that she did not know where the meat bought from Aramark comes from. However, she suggested that we call our dining hall and that perhaps they would know. We called the dining hall and they told us our meats primarily come from Smithfield, Carolina Turkeys and Smithfield and that we receive our deli meats from Boars Head. In looking into the practices of such places, we believe that they lack transparency and we would like to request details in their supplier’s farming practices such as waste management, animal treatment, and environmental impact.

We believe we have the right to know the way our food is created and handled, because we deserve to make our own choices on whether or not we deem it appropriate to consume. We deserve to know whether our choices are fueling the destructive industrial factory farms or if we are supporting local family farms and businesses. We deserve to know whether or not our choices are contributing to environmental destruction and problems with public health, and we deserve to know whether or not we are supporting humane methods of consumerism. We deserve answers, and we would like them soon.

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