Freshman Erik Rosenbaum was eating French toast and eggs with friends at the North Campus Dining Hall in early February when he began to wonder.
“Where does this come from?” the landscape architecture major said.
Rosenbaum proposed a piece of legislation calling for more transparency from Dining Services, but the bill gained no support from the Residence Hall Association’s Dining Services Advisory Board on Wednesday afternoon.
Rosenbaum’s proposal would have required Dining Services to publish where food comes from and how it is prepared. Though Dining Services officials and RHA representatives support food transparency, they said, they found the requirements of the bill timely, costly and not feasible.
“This would be a huge undertaking to track down every ingredient in every recipe and stay current on it,” Dining Services spokesman Bart Hipple said. “All of our ingredients do come through approved sources; they are safe products; they are high-quality products. … I’m just not sure where we’re not being transparent.”
Dining Services hasn’t received many questions of this nature, Hipple said, so they were surprised by the legislation. Students with questions about food or where it comes from can contact Allison Lilly, associate director of new initiatives for Dining Services, or email umfood@umd.edu, Hipple said.
“Transparency between the diners and the students is important, but when it comes to this bill specifically, it’s just not a good idea,” said Darius Craig, chairman of the RHA Dining Services Advisory Board.
Originally, Craig supported the bill, but he described the proposal as unrealistic upon taking a closer look.
Rosenbaum originally sent his proposal to the University Senate, but the Senate Executive Committee decided on Feb. 19 that the RHA would be a more appropriate governing body to review the policy, as it oversees Dining Services.
With the Dining Services Advisory Board’s lack of support, the legislation will not move forward to the RHA floor. It will be sent with recommendations back to the student affairs vice president, Craig said.
Though Dining Services provides nutritional facts about all of their meals online, Rosenbaum said knowing where food comes from is just as important.
“There’s some power knowing what is going on behind the scenes,” he said. “Not that I’m particularly suspicious, but [I want to] to be more knowledgeable as a consumer because there’s not really much choice when it comes to the dining plan.”
Rosenbaum wrote about the dining halls’ “suspiciously perfect fruit,” “odd-tasting eggs” and “feathered chicken wings” in his proposal but said he doesn’t have a problem with the food at the dining halls.
“You base your choices on the information you have, so if you don’t have the information, you can’t make informed decisions,” he said.
Rosenbaum said he didn’t know of a way to pose questions to Dining Services but that an individual answer isn’t the outcome he wants.
“It wouldn’t change anything for just me knowing,” he said, explaining that he still thinks there should be more public transparency about the food.
Though freshman Nicole Cherubet has also never voiced her concerns about dining hall food — and continues to eat it — she said she has wondered how it got onto her plate.
“Sometimes I’m in the line and I see them opening plastic packages and I’m wondering if it’s fresh or not,” the public health sciences major said. “So I wonder what factory that’s coming from and where they get it from.”
Cherubet said she doesn’t look into the components of her dining hall food, but her roommate does — and usually she finds what she needs, she said.
“We do not want to hide any of this information,” Hipple said. “But to make it accurate and guaranteed would be a huge expensive endeavor, and it would be an ongoing expense. … I think the first step would be for people to come in and talk to Allison [Lilly]. … As far as we can tell, no one has reached out.”
