Across college campuses, students will often be found ranting about the food in the dining halls. Fortunately, unlike at Washington University in St. Louis, Penn students will not be found complaining about a lack of tomato slices.
Bon Appetit, the food service provider for Penn, Wash U. and other colleges, recently signed an agreement stating that Bon Appetit will only buy tomatoes from farms that are committed to protecting workers’ rights. While Penn Dining’s tomato supplier supports these higher safety standards and employee wages, Wash U. has recently agreed to work with a tomato grower that meets the standards, but grows mostly grape tomatoes.
In the past, we have praised Bon Appetit for it’s commitment to sustainability and the use locally-grown foods. Along the same lines, we applaud Bon Appetit’s commitment to improve the wages and working conditions of food-industry workers. We hope that more tomato growers will live up to this higher standard of employee treatment, and that Wash U. will be able to use a tomato provider that offers many types of the food.
Follow up: Hundreds of Penn students turned out in opposition to the Westboro Baptist Church protest against Hillel Monday morning.
We are happy students decided to express their disdain for the church in a peaceful and non-violent manner. The church preaches a message of intolerance that is offensive to a number of groups, and it is excellent that students vastly outnumbered the roughly one dozen protesters.
