Animal-science and culinary-arts students and teachers form a meaty partnership in Batavia, N.Y.

For three years, culinary arts students in Batavia, N.Y., have been making meals using meat—such as chicken, eggs, lamb, pork and guinea hens—produced by their school's animal-science program. The partnership has provided a way for students to learn where their meals come from. "If you ask my students at the beginning of the year where food comes from, they say it comes from the grocery store," animal-science instructor Holly Partridge told Howard Owens of The Batavian.

Partridge and Chef Nathan Koscielski said that the collaboration of the programs is "teaching future cooks to respect the ingredients that go into their recipes and teaching future farmers about quality ingredients," Owens writes. "The farmers learn about how to raise animals properly, and the cooks learn to reuse waste in a way that is better for the planet." The cooking scraps leftover in the kitchen are fed to the pigs, lamb and chickens.

The future chefs get to see the live animals to gain a respect for the ingredients they will be using to cook. The animal-science students raise the poultry, then send it away for slaughter by professionals. After that, they show up to the kitchen to see what the Chef Koscielski and his students will cook with it. "I don't know of a college that is doing what we're doing here with the integration of the farm," Koscielski said. "Being able to work with my farmer on a daily basis—I don't get that anywhere else."

The animals are raised organically, which Koscielski said promotes a richer taste and helps the environment. "We want students to learn about organic, healthy food that leaves a small footprint on the environment," he said.

Next year, the Animal Science department plans to expand its henhouse and produce more eggs, which will be enough to provide for Koscielski's kitchen for the whole school year, and that will save money and "give kids an opportunity to run a business venture," Partridge said.

Animal-science students learn that the animals must be raised humanely if they're going to produce good meat. However, they're not pets. "I'm not getting kids coming in crying that that little pig is going to get killed for somebody to eat. I'm getting kids with the understanding that production animals that we raise, we handle different than the companion animals that we raise," Partridge said. (Read more)