U.S. universities serving up more halal choices to campus dining halls

(Photo: Columbia University in New York City, USA / LEE SNIDER PHOTO IMAGES / Shutterstock.com)

Eating at the campus cafeteria is becoming more appealing, and less stressful, for Muslim students in the United States, where many public and private universities have been upping their options for halal meals in recent years.

COLUMBIA

Such initiatives are often student-led, as they were at Columbia University in New York City, one of the pioneers in halal dining on campus.

“Columbia Dining first started offering halal meals during [the Ramadan] fasting periods at the request of students over a decade ago,” says Victoria Dunn, executive director of Columbia Dining. “The programme gradually incorporated halal meals into its menu over time. Nine years ago, halal offerings became a daily part of the menu.”

Changes like those at Columbia, where the dining halls include separate stations serving halal versions of the day’s hot meals, are starting to address what was until recently a frustratingly unmet need. In a 2010 survey by the Islamic Food and Nutrition Council of America (IFANCA), 77 percent of all survey takers said there were absolutely no halal meal services available on their campus.

The new trend towards a greater number of halal offerings is driven in part by increasing Muslim enrolment at U.S. universities: According to the most recent Pew Research survey, 26 percent of Muslims said they were enrolled in college classes in 2011, up from 22 percent in 2007. The college food service market as a whole is also growing, by about 5 percent a year, according to Chicago-based consulting organisation Technomic. These two factors combine to form an opportunity for halal food providers on or near college campuses.

Columbia recently transitioned to using halal bone-in chicken for all of its hot-food stations, not just the halal ones, Dunn says: “The halal bone-in chicken is purchased locally, which also supports our sustainable buying philosophy.” Only about 1 percent of students on a meal plan at Columbia “self-identify that they adhere to a halal diet,” Dunn adds, but says they are not required to register and any student who wants to can eat from the halal station.

BOSTON UNIVERSITY

At Boston University in Massachusetts, about 1.4 percent of students adhere to a halal diet, up from less than 1 percent in 2009 when the school introduced its first halal meal options, according to Scott Rosario of BU Dining Services.

“The halal options started based on student requests and began with a specific day of the week designated as the day which halal options would be served,” Rosario says. “The programme grew to include halal options at every meal period at all of our dining rooms and at our retail food court in the student centre.”

As at Columbia, all fresh chicken–including whole chickens and thighs and breasts–served at Boston University is halal-certified, and the university also offers halal beef hamburgers. Rosario says students are happy with the new offerings but have asked that dining services “make sure we better and more clearly identify the halal options on our menus.”

Sourcing halal-certified meat is not the only challenge for universities that want to improve their food-service options for observant Muslim students. Separate cookware and utensils must also be used to avoid cross-contamination with non-halal foods during the preparation and cooking process.

UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON, TEXAS

Other schools are trying different ways of incorporating halal options into their food service programmes. At the University of Houston in Texas, halal dishes are being added to the menu at the food trucks parked around campus, as well as in the dining halls, according to an October report in a student publication. 

STANFORD

In addition to the halal meats provided upon request in all of its dining halls, Stanford University in California supplies a boxed suhoor meal each night during Ramadan for observant students to eat in the pre-dawn hours the next day before they begin their fast. Two of Stanford’s dining facilities also extend their hours of operation to close an hour after sunset in order to accommodate students breaking the fast.

UCLA

At the University of California, Los Angeles, Muslim and Jewish students worked together to lobby for a new supplemental meal plan—implemented in September-- for kosher and halal-observant students. The meals are prepared off-campus by local vendors and sold to students for an extra fee. The school’s dining services administration characterized it as a small step to assess interest in the new food offerings.

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