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Group targets Dal’s corporate food contracts

Food Not Bombs Halifax chapter wants open food distribution

At around 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday a small group of people showed up at the Dalhousie University library pushing an old shopping cart. Inside of the cart was a cardboard box of fruit and vegetables, and a couple of plastic buckets filled with hot vegan food. Outside of Killam Library they set up the buckets and boxes and started handing out leaflets to passing students.

The group is Food Not Bombs, an activist group that has brought its food and fight to Dalhousie University. Food Not Bombs groups are found all over the world. Though not directly affiliated with each other, they do share similar goals: to abolish poverty and protest food waste, something they see as an offshoot of capitalism.

“It’s to make a point. It’s to take this space here and transform it into a space where food’s offered, information’s offered … where people can meet each other. Just create a bit of a community space, not ask permission. We don’t need to,” said Asaf Rashid, referring to the space outside of the Dal library.

Rashid is a member of the group and is also a staff member at the Nova Scotia Public Interest Research Group, a social and environmental justice group at Dalhousie. Food Not Bombs is not a student group, but a collective of around seven people who cook and serve vegan food twice a week (on Sunday the group meets at the North Branch Library on Gottingen Street).

In the past, the Halifax’s Food Not Bombs chapter met in front of the Spring Garden Road library on Wednesdays, but low attendance prompted the group to rethink its location. The group chose Dalhousie not only to feed more people, but also because it gave them a chance to protest the two companies that provide food on campus. The group is protesting Sodexho Canada and Aramark Canada because of their contracts with the U.S. military and prison system.

“Basically, everything we’re opposed to is what they are,” Rashid said.

Food at Dalhousie is provided by Sodexho in the Student Union Building, and by Aramark in the dining halls and on the rest of campus. Dalhousie also has an exclusive contract with Pepsi, so the only beverages for sale at Dal are Pepsi products.

“It takes a really sick mentality to come up with something like an exclusivity contract, saying ‘we’re the only ones who are allowed to serve food on this whole big area of campus,’ thereby giving them the right to, should they desire, to kick off anybody for trying to serve food on campus, like what we’re doing.”

Rashid says that one of the group’s long-term goals is to set-up a student-run food service.

“The goal is to expand on this idea to encourage people to take the space and use it. The corporations might think they control the area here, but if we just don’t let them, and if we assert ourselves and our autonomy we can do that.”

The food at Wednesday's meet was largely made up of donations from last Saturday's farmer's market, including bananas, apples and lettuce. Some members had also cooked up some rice with roasted vegetables, which people scooped out of a bucket into old yogurt and butter containers.

In the rush of students going to and from classes, only a few stopped to check out the cardboard boxes of food. Jennifer Anderson is a King’s student who stopped to eat a container of beet soup. She hadn’t been to a Food Not Bombs meeting before, but would like to help out with it in the future “instead of just consuming.”

Many of the students who stopped to take food hadn’t heard of Food Not Bombs before, but took the different flyers members were handing out. Around a dozen people stopped to eat, though many of them seemed like Food Not Bombs regulars rather than new members. David Parker described himself as a supporter, eater, and one-time cook for Food Not Bombs.

“Food not bombs is not just a charity,” he said. “It’s also a way to get together to discuss critical issues.”

Charlie Crosby, Dalhousie’s media relations person, said that downtown is just a 10-minute walk away if students don’t want to eat at Aramark or Sodexho.

“And beyond the main food providers, we have for example Second Cup, there’s a Tim Hortons, there’s a number of places that offer food in the immediate area. No one is compelled to eat from any specific food service provider, there are other options.”

He said he doesn’t know if a student co-op has been suggested, but that the university is always open to suggestions.

Rashid says that so far Dalhousie hasn’t asked them to leave or stop serving food, but seems to anticipate it happening in the future.

“At some point in time security or the police will attempt to unwelcome us, but we will gladly welcome all the students to rally behind us and defend food. Everyone has the right to eat.”