Bon Appétit Management Company Director Awarded Seafood Champion

Bon Appétit Management Company’s Helene York one of five Seafood Choices Seafood Champion awardees

Palo Alto, Calif. (March 16, 2010) —Seafood Choices, an initiative of the ocean conservation and communications organization SeaWeb, today announced that Helene York, supply chain manager and director of the Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation, is a Seafood Champion Award recipient. The Seafood Choices Seafood Champion Awards annually recognizes individuals and companies for outstanding leadership in promoting environmentally responsible seafood. Seafood Choices established the award to honor those in the seafood industry whose past or present contributions demonstrate a commitment to innovation that leads to change.

As an educator, writer, supply chain manager, and director of the Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation, Helene York keeps sustainable seafood marine resource conservation at the forefront of her many responsibilities, which include establishing responsible sourcing policies for Bon Appétit’s 400 cafes and restaurants nationwide. “Despite significant progress toward environmentally sound sourcing in the seafood industry,” says Ms. York, “the ocean still has far too few defenders against habitat destruction, overfishing and acidification due to climate change. Being a Seafood Champion finalist means I will continue to push the food industry to make truly sustainable seafood sourcing a non-negotiable priority that is traceable through every link in the chain, from fisheries and farms to intermediaries, chefs and consumers.”

In 2005, Helene York developed a comprehensive sustainable seafood procurement policy for Compass Group North America, the parent company of Bon Appétit Management Company, and helped manage the policy’s internal implementation for three years. In 2007, she launched Bon Appétit’s ground-breaking Low Carbon Diet program to raise awareness of the food system’s impact on climate change in order to improve food procurement policies, including eliminating air-freighted seafood and promoting low-trophic species.

She advises non-governmental organizations and chefs on how to work together effectively; is a founding board member of FishChoice.com, an online resource for chefs seeking sustainable seafood; and is a regular contributor to The Atlantic Monthly online magazine’s Food Channel.

The 2010 Seafood Champion winners were announced March 14 in advance of the International Boston Seafood Show, the largest seafood show in North America.

In addition to Helene York, the 2010 Seafood Champions are:

  • The Co-operative, United Kingdom
  • Howard Johnson, Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, United States
  • KLM In-Flight Services, The Netherlands
  • Réseau des Journalistes pour une pêche responsable en Afrique de l’Ouest (The West African Journalists Network for Responsible Fisheries, or REJOPRAO), West Africa
#

Seafood Choices is an international program of SeaWeb that provides leadership and creates opportunities for change across the seafood industry and ocean conservation community. The program seeks to create synergies and help identify creative solutions to long-held challenges. By building relationships and stimulating dialogue, Seafood Choices is encouraging and challenging all sectors of the seafood industry along the road toward sustainability. www.seafoodchoices.org

SeaWeb, founded in 1996 to raise awareness of the growing threats to the ocean and its living resources, is a communications-based nonprofit organization that utilizes social marketing techniques to advance ocean conservation. By increasing public awareness, advancing science-based solutions and mobilizing decision makers around ocean conservation, SeaWeb brings together multiple, diverse and powerful voices for a healthy ocean. www.seaweb.org

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.