I volunteer at a food bank, and the company that sends us our food decides what we get. Last Tuesday they sent so much produce we could not fit it all into fridges. We were trying to give away cases of the food on Wednesday, but people were turning it down because they had no place to store a case of tomatoes, or cauliflower. This was what we had left after last Wednesday's morning give away. Not pictured the 5000lbs of watermelons, the 2500lbs of onions (those will last a lot longer).
The company that supplies us wants to move from sending shipments every other week, to once a month. This would cause even more no produce loss.
It is so frustrating to have all this food for it to go bad. Even if we got the same volume of produce, but there was variation in what it is we could give it away easier.
Edit: I posted this in a comment.
Because of bureaucracy we have to request this. If it is found out we are giving away the food to unapproved recipients we can lose all of our funding. If we give to unapproved recipients and they in turn give us prepared food to give out, that is okay.
Word got out that we were loading up my pickup with food and taking it to the homeless camps. I did get a number of them to start coming to the bank to get food. But it was easier when I could take stuff to them.
We are not allowed to simply give it out to anyone. This is not like a church pantry where all of the food is donated by the community and's parishioners. There is government funding, as well as private businesses, which I am guessing get their money back from the government for funding this. If we could simply give it to anyone we would not be in this situation.
If I were in that situation, I would try quickly whipping up some homemade posters and put them at our market square, maybe in front of schools, and in front of grocery stores. I would make sure to specify why these are given away, otherwise people might be suspicious.
That would probably illegal, but …well… who’s going to sue a food bank over hanging a few posters for 2 days?
In the US? Where we pour bleach on food that has been discarded to make sure that someone who is hungry can't eat it?
But yes, this is a great suggestion. Also, looking for a local farm or farms that could feed these to their animals (specifically chickens or pigs).
What the fuck? Seriously?
Yes, grocery stores sometimes do this because they are afraid of being sued by someone who gets salmonella or something from the dumpster.
This is what they tell the public.
In reality they just don't want homeless people near their dumpsters.
Or to give away anything for free. They'd rather destroy it than give away something that could've made money.
I'm sure that's a reason too.
It's the only reason.
If it was a liability concern, why are they intentionally poisoning the food? That would make them much more liable for someone becoming sickened.
Yup. Circa 2017, one of my sisters would gather up a bunch of food every week and have a ‘cook out’ at a park near her that was known to have a large homeless population. Basically, they fed anyone who asked for a plate. She did this with a group of friends who I guess were just bored and successful enough to want to feel good about feeding the homeless.
After a few months, their activities drew the ire of… someone, and they got raided by the cops and local health inspectors. Despite acknowledging the food they were serving was at the proper temp and all food handling protocol was being followed, they took an ‘every possible justification’ approach to the situation that they could and insinuated everything from unknown, dirty kitchens to lack of a catering license, with severe future legal threats if they were to continue feeding the homeless. The officials then poured bleach into the food and dumped it into the trash.
Damn. In other news, I'm radicalized now.
its a liability issue to have homeless people/or dumpster diving for food.
I'm sure there will be people salivating at the opportunity.
Well, I commented that before I learned that OP is in New Mexico.