UMass Dining, a campus food service provider, serves 45,000 meals per day and purchases USD 850,000 (EUR 645,000) of sustainable seafood per year. It is the largest dining-services operation in the country. UMass Dining students consume nearly 21 pounds per year of seafood per person, well over the national average of 14 pounds. This gives UMass Dining a unique responsibility to not only source foods that are socially and ecologically responsible but to educate their industry. All seafood served through their program is certified sustainably sourced using Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch guidelines. UMass has gone beyond this by incorporating locally sourced underutilized seafood, into their programs to reduce their environmental impact, save endangered fish populations, and increase the resiliency of the New England fishing industry. UMass's long-range goal is to decrease the start-up energy and financial burden involved in doing this, so that other institutions may use their regional food supplies. UMass Dining also hosts dozens of special events each semester in order to effectively market new aspects of their program to the student body.
