Santa Clara University

Santa Clara, Calif., Jan. 27 – What do tomatoes have to do with slavery? How does your cheeseburger contribute to climate change? How can poultry production threaten your health? These are some of the questions that will be addressed during a forum taking place on Tuesday, Feb. 2 at 6 p.m. at Santa Clara University’s Adobe Lodge.

“The Story Behind the Food” is a presentation provided by Bon Appétit Management Company Sustainability Fellow Vera Chang. She was one of three recent college graduates hired as fellows by Bon Appétit. They visited farms across the country and spoke with farmers about their struggles in producing food sustainably, fostering farm biodiversity, addressing farm waste, and creating an economically sustainable operation that will allow them to treat workers fairly and pay them a living wage.

The fellows are now visiting college campuses to share information about the company’s supply chain with students, faculty, staff, and chefs and kitchen workers who prepare the food in the cafés. The overall goal is to help farmers build and improve on existing relationships with all their buyers as a way to regionalize and strengthen the country’s food supply chain and improve food security and overall sustainability for the future.

Bon Appétit manages and provides all of SCU’s dining and catering services.

About Bon Appétit Management Company
Bon Appétit Management Company (www.bamco.com) is an onsite restaurant company offering full foodservice management to corporations, universities and specialty venues. Bon Appétit is committed to sourcing sustainable, local foods for all cafés throughout the country. A pioneer in environmentally-sound sourcing policies, Bon Appétit has developed programs addressing local purchasing, the overuse of antibiotics, sustainable seafood, cage-free eggs, and most recently, the connection between food and climate change. The company has received numerous awards for its work from organizations like the Natural Resources Defense Council, Seafood Choices Alliance, The Humane Society of the United States, and Food Alliance. Based in Palo Alto, CA, Bon Appétit has more than 400 cafés in 30 states, including eBay, the University of Pennsylvania and the Getty Center.

About Santa Clara University
Santa Clara University, a comprehensive Jesuit, Catholic university located 40 miles south of San Francisco in California’s Silicon Valley, offers its 8,846 students rigorous undergraduate curricula in arts and sciences, business, and engineering, plus masters and law degrees, and engineering Ph.D.s. Distinguished nationally by one of the highest graduation rates among all U.S. masters universities, California’s oldest operating higher-education institution demonstrates faith-inspired values of ethics and social justice. For more information, see www.scu.edu.

Media Contact:
Connie Kim Coutain | ccoutain@scu.edu | 408-554-5126 | 408-829-4836 cell