‘Practice What We Teach’

Harper Adams is all about teaching and educating sustainable food production. To this end Harper Adams practices what we teach. Our full-time butcher & dedicated chefs work tirelessly to utilise the produce from the Harper farm. We are fortunate to work with dedicated farm staff who rear the high welfare animals to be consumed on the student’s plates. Liaising with the farm on timescales of rearing the animals to coincide with the student meal demands takes time & dedication. Pork, beef and lamb from the harper farm is served within the dining rooms on campus.

8 examples of the Harper produce & locally sourced ingredients:

1. The greatest joy of promoting Harper produce: - born, reared and enjoyed on campus. Chefs enjoy creating new exciting dishes with all parts of the animals
2. Food from our own farm is great value, keeps monies within the institution and hardly travelled any distance reducing our carbon footprint
3. From the Harper pork we make 64 thousand sausages a year
4. We cure meat the meats making pastrami, chorizo & pancetta & soon to start smoking our own bacon.
5. From the Harper beef we make over 20 thousand burgers a year
6. There are many examples of students at Harper using this system for their studies & research. Certain parts of the animals are used in teaching: - like pig’s trotters being used for vet departments practicing their suturing.
7. Every bit of the animals is used: - even roasting off the pig’s ears & sending to the vet department for them to offer as treats for the physiotherapy animals.
8. Local suppliers are used for bread (Catherine`s bakery in Newport) & milk (wells farm in Stafford) & Moyden`s cheese (Newport)

The department also closely monitors food waste & we weigh what comes back off plates. This is then communicated back to customers with the message of only take food which you will eat. The dining room also has a left-over scheme at dinner: - where any food that would normally be wasted can be taken away after dinner is served. (see signage advertising the scheme in the dining room)

The department also strives to reduce packaging proudly claiming to be the first University to eradicate single use coffee cups in its busiest cafes.

Hot off the press: The Catering department are pleased to announce that following an inspection of Costa, Graze and the QMH Dining Room and Kitchen by the Environmental Health Officer last Friday, all three units retained their five-star score on the door rating. Kaldi and the Feed Store, both also have a five-star rating, making another clean sweep of five stars for the catering department.