Bon Appétit Management Company

Located in the heart of ranching country, Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA, is proud to support the work of grass-based ranchers like Cheryl and Robert Cosner of Upper Dry Creek Ranch.

Located in the heart of ranching country, Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA, is proud to support the work of grass-based ranchers like Cheryl and Robert Cosner of Upper Dry Creek Ranch.

Whitman Executive Sous Chef Julie Zumwalt, Dining Manager Susan Todhunter, and I recently had a chance to visit the Cosners. We stood between two grassy hills dotted with heritage apple trees in the foothills of the Blue Mountains in Weston, OR, where the Cosners raise lamb and beef on 2,200 acres of certified organic grassland.

On October 17, 2011, Director of Strategic Initiatives and Research Helene York delivered the keynote at the State of the Plate conference in Washington, DC, an event designed to bring meat producers and the culinary community together to engage in discussion about sustainable and humane meat production practices.

Thanks to Michael Pollan‘s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma and the documentary Food, Inc., more people have become aware that the majority of cows in this country are raised on a grain-based diet for the last few months of their lives — and why that’s problematic for the health of the cows, the health of the humans who eat them, and the environment. The short version: Grains such as corn and soy are cheap carbohydrates that make cows get fat fast (not unlike humans). But cows’ digestive systems were designed to handle a high-fiber diet of mostly fresh grass or hay, with some natural grains. High-grain corn and soy diets — and the feedlots in which they are stuffed with them — cause many cattle to get sick, and encourage the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant E. coli as well. But as with […]

When Jonas Stoltzfus of JuJo Acres in Loysville, PA, walked straight up to his non-castrated breeding bull and gave it a nice pat on the back, I knew I wasn’t on an ordinary farm.

In this video , UK Professor Michael Crawford discusses the impact of factory farming and modern meat production, which he says should more rightly be called “fat production.”

~Written by Carolina Fojo, East Coast Fellow for Bon Appétit Mgmt. Co.  As a Fellow for Bon Appétit, I have the pleasure of traveling to local farms from which Bon Appétit purchases, and meeting the very people who provide us with the food we eat. In September, I traveled to St. Libory, IL to visit Brad Schmitz, owner of Wenneman Meat Co., an old fashioned butcher shop and meat market that provides meat from Illinois farmers to Bon Appétit cafés at Washington University in St. Louis. Wenneman Meat Co. is unique to its area. Let’s face it—Illinois is corn country, not meat country. And sure enough, as I drove down IL-15 E—(nearly blinded by the sun, it was so bright!)—I passed field after field… after field… of corn, and soy. So what is this shop, sourcing local meat, doing in […]

In my last vlog, I talked about a few food issues that stand out to me as some of the bigger challenges we face. In this vlog, I talk about two of those issues—the depletion of wild seafood and climate change—and give suggestions of what we as consumers can do to make a difference.