1 The Battalion
Page 3 • Wednesday, January 27, 1999
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Story by Stephen Wells • Photos by Cariho Casas
F or 100 years, the auxiliary Texas
A&M Department of Food Ser
vices has been expanding the
belt-lines of an army of students.
As students flock to the dining halls
for another meal, they are less apt to
think about where their food came
from than whether or not they dare ask
the lady behind the counter for a dou
ble-serving of chicken tenders.
Students who have fun dining on
campus are partaking in the result of
hours of labor and years of preparation.
The journey of a burger begins with
a single grunt, as a production cow
spits out another calf for feeding and
eventual slaughter.
Dr. Jeff Saveli, a professor of animal
science, said the life of a food animal
can be broken down into discrete steps.
“Calves that are weaned from the
cows could be backgrounded on a pas
ture, and when they reach a certain
weight, they are sent to a feed yard,
usually up in the Panhandle,” Saveli
said.
After months of fattening, the animal
is ready to be “processed,” or killed,
and then sliced into crude cuts of meat.
“The big processing plants are all
near the areas of production,” Saveli
Top Right: Food Services employee Nikki Johnson
serves students spaghetti and meatballs during
lunch Tuesday.
Above: Food Services employee Betty Hickman
strains a vat of spaghetti during preparation of
lunch Tuesday.
said. “They harvest the animal and
convert it to a carcass. Some of the
larger ones can slaughter four to five
thousand head of cattle in two shifts.”
Mike Bell, a sophomore animal sci
ence major, said there is no dirtier
work than a processing plant.
“If you’ve ever worked with a cou
ple of pounds of hamburger meat,
multiply that by a thousand and you
get a worker in a plant,” Bell said. “You
stand in front of the conveyer belt, and
every second, this piece of cow comes
down the line, and you make some
cuts on it. You smell like blood at the
end of the day.”
This level of production is essential
to feed a group the size of the A&M
student body. Last semester, the din
ing halls on campus served up 30,000
pounds of hamburger meat, 20,000
briskets and 150,000 burgers.
All of this food was prepared and
delivered by the Department of Food
Services, or more specifically, the
Commissary on Agronomy Road.
Ron Beard, director of the Depart
ment of Food Services, said a massive
volume of food product enters and
leaves the Commissary every week.
“A lot of the food students eat
comes from plants in California and
Mexico,” Beard said. “The food moves
from there to Houston or Austin daily,
then gets trucked up here. A truck may
have 720 cases of food, for 40,000
pounds worth of goods.”
The Department of Food Services,
in order to cut costs for students on a
budget, operates on a bidding process.
The company that meets quality
and cost demands is the one putting
food in the students’ mouths.
“Like most state agencies, we oper
ate on a bidding process,” Beard said.
“Our bid goes out on the Web for the
required 21 days, and we ask for bids
on a specific product such as a grade
of meat or type of produce.”
The Commissary is, essentially, a
combination warehouse and butcher
shop. Primal cuts, basic cuts of meat,
are trimmed down and processed on
the premises, and vegetables are cut to
meet the dining hall demands.
Turnaround time for vegetables is
about three days, while, for meat and
dry goods it is several days.
For anyone who is nodding their
head in agreement, secure in their pre
diction the food must be days old,
Food Services is following standard
procedure.
“Storage time varies from meat to
meat and for cuts of meat,” Saveli said.
“A standard time to wait is 14 to 21
days for the aging of beef before it goes
to an eating establishment. The wait
improves the flavor and tenderness of
the meat.
The flavor and the tenderness of the
meat comes from the processes that
occur after death in the animal. The
toughest meat is the meat from a fresh
ly killed animal.”
As a substitute for the dining halls,
many students go to some franchise
establishments on campus.
Even in the warm glow of the
Whataburger in the Underground, stu
dents are, in a way, eating from Food
Services.
“All of the food franchises, includ
ing the ones at Sbisa, are there because
of a licensing agreement,” Beard said.
“Under the agreement, the university
owns and operates the establishment
and pays a fee to use the name.
“For example, for Stone Willie’s Piz
za, we are paying them to use the
name and buy our food from their
sources, but it is still operated by Food
Services.”
27, 19$
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To learn more go by our table in
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