Virginia Tech Dining Services has started to serve meat products that have been raised and processed on campus. The dining centers have been using meats purchased from the College of Agriculture and Life Science’s Meat Science Center for more than a year, providing customers products sourced within two miles of the central campus in Blacksburg.
The Meat Science Center is an on-campus processing facility fully certified by state inspectors according to USDA standards and sold by the Center's Plantation Road Meats division. The animals are raised on Virginia Tech properties.
“This is the first time that these venues have utilized closely-sourced meats with such frequency,” says Dining Services Sustainability Coordinator Elena Dulys-Nusbaum. “The Farms And Fields Project venue in Owens Food Court has historically been the only venue to do this consistently, but our growing relationship with the Meat Science Center has closed the gap on the distance factor of some of the meat products we are serving.”
Meat Science Center products used in the dining centers include fresh hams, pork loin roasts, steamship rounds of beef, sirloin roasts and ground beef. Initially utilized only for special events, they are now regularly featured menu items.