reduce, reuse, and recycle... food
Food recovery is a more sophisticated way of saying "food recycling", making use of unwanted or unused food.
The most common methods of food recovery [pdf] are field gleaning, perishable food rescue or salvage (from wholesale and retail food sellers), food rescue (for prepared foods) and nonperishable food collection (food with long shelf lives). Some of these tactics are familiar to Food Not Bombs workers, food shelf volunteers or dumpster divers.
What you may not know is that under President Clinton, some United States Department of Agriculture agencies (Rural Development, the Farm Service Agency, and the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service) and AmeriCorps created a Summer of Gleaning project working with food recovery groups in twenty-two states to help recover food that would have otherwise been thrown away.
They were aided in this program by the passage in 1996 of the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act which creates a federal-level protection from liability for accidental damages for people and non-profits who donate food in good faith to help feed the needy.
A person or gleaner shall not be subject to civil or criminal liability arising from the nature, age, packaging, or condition of apparently wholesome food or an apparently fit grocery product that the person or gleaner donates in good faith to a nonprofit organization for ultimate distribution to needy individuals.
The USDA created a Citizen's Guide to Food Recovery which includes a handy state food recovery resource directory as well as a list of state food recovery law citations (sadly unhyperlinked). Other government agencies have also published information on food recovery
- The EPA even got into the act, dealing with the related issue of reducing food waste, mainly via composting and food bank donations.
- The USDA created a Best Practices Manual For Food Recovery and Gleaning in the National School Lunch Program
- The FDA created a list of links to resources for Food Emergency and Salvage Information in the case of a natural or man-made disaster situation.
- The USDA Economic Research Service published the results of their research on food recovery and farmer's markets in Increasing Food Recovery From Farmers’ Markets: A Preliminary Analysis
- The Department of Transportation joined with the USDA and private sector organizations to try to address the logisitcal issues involved in transporting available food to the people who need it. It's unclear what the results of this program initiative were.
Hungry and want to talk to the government about it? Their number is 1-800-GLEAN-IT
Bookmark/Search this post with:
Pollution prevention in the food service industry
I compiled a bibliography that touched on this subject. See Selected Resources for Pollution Prevention in the Food Service Industry at http://www.wmrc.uiuc.edu/main_sections/info_services/library_docs/other_pubs/P2_food_service_indus.pdf.
Laura Barnes
Illinois Waste Management and Research Center Library
canned government peanutbutter
About twenty years ago the government use to give food to the needy. They use to give canned peanutbutter. There was a recepie on the can for peanutbutter cookies. Does anyone have the recepie?
Food for the homeless
i am a street evangelist ministering to the homeless and those in poverty. i am trying to find the means to donations of food, food banks, government food & supplies as well as government grants where i can buy food and personal items to help the homeless and those in poverty in my community. please give me some resources and information if you can be of any help.
Reminder about questions / Food bank resources
Hi Lenette,
You raise good questions, but three things keep me from being able to provide you the best answer to your question:
1) Free Government Information is set up to discuss and hopefully influence Federal information policy in the United States. We're not set up to take reference questions on a regular basis. We have listed some organizations that do take research questions like yours. If you need more information than I give in this comment, please visit Find Gov't Information and click on one of the links that take you to where you can ask information questions.
2) You say you are looking for resources in your community, but didn't tell us what that community was. On a national level, the US Department of Agriculture has a page that lists serveral places to find food banks and other food aid resources in your community.
3) You did not leave us an e-mail address, so even if one of us volunteers was able to give you a complete answer to you, we'd have no way of getting an answer to you. Hopefully you'll come back and see the links to "find govt info" and to the USDA food bank page.
Best wishes for your efforts in feeding the hungry.
------------------------------------
"And besides all that, what we need is a decentralized, distributed system of depositing electronic files to local libraries willing to host them." -- Daniel Cornwall, tipping his hat to Cato the Elder for the original quote.
Post new comment