July 2, 2008

Healthy Pledge: Carroll Hospital Center to use more locally produced food

By Erica Kritt, Times Staff Writer

During the week of July 19, Marylanders are encouraged to buy local food, but the Maryland Hospitals for a Healthier Environment Initiative challenges the state’s hospitals to buy locally as much as possible.

The initiative, which is coordinated by the University of Maryland School of Nursing, wants hospitals to provide healthy, local and sustainably produced foods.

Carroll Hospital Center in Westminster, which serves about 1,500 meals each day, jumped on board in April 2007 as the second hospital in Maryland to sign up for The Healthy Food in Health Care Pledge.

By signing the pledge, the hospital promises to increase the offering of fruit and vegetables, use more local and organic food and minimize waste by using products and packaging that are friendly to the environment, among other goals.

“We’ve always supported local purchasing, because of being a small county hospital,” said Marcea Cotter, director of food and environmental services at Carroll Hospital Center.

The hospital has been receiving shipments of meat from Bullock’s Country Meats and Farm Market Inc. in Westminster since 1962, according to former owner Bob Bullock.

Clyde Hirt and Doug Zepp, the current owners of Bullock’s Meats, said their company delivers on average 100 pounds of red meat a week to the hospital.

Since Carroll Hospital Center had been buying foods locally for years, Cotter thought it was only appropriate to sign the pledge.

The Maryland Hospitals for a Healthy Environment Initiative hosted an event Tuesday at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore to honor the four hospitals that have signed the pledge and to encourage more hospitals to follow suit.

Kyle Nosal/Staff Photo

Carroll Hospital Center cook John Littlejohn moves flank steaks from Bullock’s County Meats and Farm Market, on Md. 32 south of Westminster, onto racks in the freezer Tuesday in Westminster.