Food feud heating up at Dal

Student group protesting food service provider’s exclusivity contract will get booted from the Student Union Building if they keep dishing out free food.

Things may soon get messy in a growing food fight between the Dalhousie Student Union and a group seeking more food alternatives on campus.

Campus Action on Food has been serving free meals at Dalhousie since their formation last fall, hoping to garner support for their cause.

But if they do it again, campus security will be first in line.

This is the message DSU President Shannon Zimmerman delivered at the group's last event, held on Jan. 12 in the lobby of Dal's Student Union Building.

"The issue is that they've been told that they are not allowed to do it ... and they never came and contacted me about the whole situation, about their concerns," Zimmerman said.

Because Sodexo is contracted as the exclusive food-service provider in the SUB, other groups can't serve inside the building without their formal blessing. When CAF was denied permission, they went ahead and did it anyway, serving a meal including free soup, vegetables and baked goods to students.

"Security knows that this is something that shouldn't be happening in our building right now," Zimmerman said of the give-aways.

Members of CAF will be kicked out of the building if they serve another meal, but group spokesman Aaron Beale said they will go ahead with the event set for Feb. 2 at noon in the SUB lobby. It will be their third meal give-away.

The free locally-sourced vegan meals are meant to protest Sodexo's monopoly in the SUB, which Beale said stands in the way of students getting the food alternatives they want.

"If you want cheap food, Sodexo doesn't have to offer it to us. There's no other competition. If you want environmentally friendly food, they don't have to offer it to us," he said. "The way the rest of the world works, competition is supposed to satisfy our needs."

While it seemed clear to Beale that they were getting the boot for infringing on the exclusivity agreement, he said Zimmerman kept "using all these excuses for kicking us out."

"It was diplomatic," Beale said of his conversation with Zimmerman that day. "The dialogue we've already had with them has been very round-about and not really addressing the issue."

He said Zimmerman presented health issues as her main concern. But Beale dismissed that, saying their vegan meal was non-perishable.

Zimmerman said "exclusivity risks and the health and safety risks" were both key ingredients in the DSU's concern. As for health issues, she said they are important because both the union and Sodexo could be legally responsible for what others are serving.

She said she hopes to meet with CAF members to discuss their problems with what Sodexo is dishing out, and told Beale this in their last conversation.

While Beale said CAF will likely accept Zimmerman's invitation, he said he doesn't think it will resolve the issue.

"In principle we are in favour of dialogue. You know, diplomacy and all that."

"I don't see it going anywhere."

CAF is a working-group of the Nova Scotia Public Interest Research Group, a self-described "non-profit, non-partisan and non-governmental organization." It is funded in part by levies collected from students by the DSU.

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