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Photo courtesy of Notre Dame Food Services Behind the Line "If you're clever, getting MSC certification is not as expensive as you might think," he says, adding it is simplified by Notre Dame's food management computer system, SeaBoard. MSC- certified seafood represents 33 percent of the 170,000 pounds of seafood served at the university each year. Miller switched some of the seafood species he was using, including chum salmon instead of sockeye, and halibut, pollock, sable- fish, tuna and cod that had MSC certification. Te cost was approximately 4 percent higher, he says, but the pay- off has been significant in terms of awareness. "It's made our 200-odd New school Universities a natural fit for sustainable seafood chain-of-custody certification BY LAUREN KRAMER W hen the University of Notre D a m e Food Ser- vices received chain-of-cus- tody certification from the Marine Stewardship Coun- cil in November 2008, Ex- ecutive Chef Donald Miller was determined to make the process easier and less com- plicated for the universities that followed this path on the road to seafood sustain- ability. It had taken him almost a year to obtain the certification and as the first university in North Ameri- ca to receive it, he knew he could provide a template or guideline to other schools. His wake-up call had 36 SeaFood Business October 2012 arrived in 1998, when he was the executive chef of the Notre Dame University Ho- tel and was catering a benefac- tors' dinner attended by then- president Father Edward Malloy. A week later, Malloy forwarded an email to him from one of the benefactors. "[Te email] lambasted me for serving Chilean sea bass at a benefit," Miller recalls. "I knew I needed to spend some time getting a handle on sea- food sustainability." Notre Dame's hotel and conference programs are MSC-certified, as well as the university's north and south dining halls, its Legends Restaurant, Greenfields, its healthy cuisine concept and its $7 million catering opera- tion. Te centralized receiv- ing warehouse is certified too. culinary staff in foodservice very conscious of what we're serving and it's raised their level of stewardship," he says. Miller assembled a step- by-step procedure manual about how a university could go about getting MSC cer- tification and delivered it to the London-based group. It's full of tips he learned along the way and it was an in- valuable resource for Steven Miller, senior chef at Cornell University. Two of Cornell's 10 all-you-can-eat locations received MSC certifica- tion in July and the process required introducing mul- tiple new vendors who could offer nine species of MSC- certified seafood. Te impetus for certifica- tion came in the summer of 2011, when Barton Seaver, a National Geographic Fel- low, Washington, D.C., chef and author of "For Cod and Country," spent two days with Cornell's culinary team. "He spoke about how we can effect change in the oceans and it was very mov- ing," Steven Miller recalls. "It really resonated with the group of chefs I was work- ing with, and the result One-third of the seafood served at Notre Dame is MSC-certified. was that our dining man- agement team decided even though it was more costly to move toward MSC certifica- tion, it was important that we do so." Cornell will be featur- ing up to 1,000 pounds of seafood each week in its MSC-certified locations, and Miller predicts that number could easily double when the university has VIP catering functions. In terms of cost, he estimates MSC-certified product is between 30 and 50 percent more expensive on average. But on the other hand, it's saved money by cutting out many of the mid- dlemen standing the university's culinary staff and the fishermen. Cornell's foodservice loca- tions serve 27,000 daily and Miller's goal is for all loca- tions to be MSC-certified by 2015. "Don Miller's template was a really good roadmap for me to follow," he says. "As chefs, we're the gate- keepers, the first line of defense, and it's not just about cooking anymore. "If you're clever, getting MSC certification is not as expensive as you might think." — Donald Miller, executive chef, University of Notre Dame Food Services You have a responsibility to manage your resource as best you can," says Don Miller of Notre Dame. "Can you do it without MSC certification? Maybe, but it's totally different when you have to prove it." Contributing Editor Lauren Kramer lives in British Columbia Visit us online at www.seafoodbusiness.com between