Tag: food waste

Food Pantries and Food Safety

I once met a food pantry volunteer who told me that at their pantry, they checked the quality of donations of milk by opening one container and drinking it. If it tasted okay, the donation was put through.

There are a million things wrong with this strategy. The one I can’t get over is that pantries rarely get large donations of the same product, which means that you can’t assume it all has the same expiration date or even comes from the same source. Tasting one carton tells you nothing useful, and I can’t figure out how this would ever be considered an appropriate strategy.

Many food pantries depend on donations from stores that are made because products are at or past their expiration date. This means that we carry the burden of ensuring all the food we distribute is safe to consume.

It’s important to remember that many people experiencing food insecurity also lack access to affordable healthcare, which means getting sick from food pantry food could be catastrophic.

Besides offering real health risks, distributing unsafe food demonstrates a profound disrespect for the people we are supposed to be uplifting. The responsibility is not one to be taken lightly.

The challenge is that few pantries have enough food to serve their community, which increases the temptation to distribute questionable items.

While there are clear requirements about how to manage food safety in donation programs, food pantries also don’t always have the infrastructure or training necessary to maintain it.

At one of the first food pantries I worked at, our refrigeration was limited to three regular sized refrigerators while regularly serving over 100 households. I spent many winter days with the warehouse door open to chill the items that didn’t fit in the fridges. This is not how this should be done, but illustrates the impossible situation we put food justice organizations in.

It’s important to appreciate just how hard it is for food pantries to maintain food quality while depending on inadequate infrastructure, insufficient resources, and an absence of training.

This is why food safety training needs to be an ongoing priority for all staff and volunteers.

Volunteers often do not receive adequate food safety training because staff may not have the time or the knowledge themselves. Many volunteers come to food pantries with a primary goal of reducing food waste– which often translates into trying to distribute as much as possible and discarding as little as they can. An unintentional consequence of this goal is that they may distribute foods that are no longer safe to consume.

How food pantries can foster food safety:

  • Don’t be afraid to say no to a donation you don’t think is safe. I once had a manager with a fear of confrontation, which means my team found ourselves regularly throwing out unsafe donations so that we didn’t risk offending the donor. This is a waste of time, energy, and resources. If a donor is only giving you garbage, there’s no value in the relationship anyways.
  • Host regular food safety trainings for your volunteers. When I worked at a regional food bank, we had a volunteer shift sorting fresh donations that included a ten minute orientation on food safety standards that we shared with every single shift. It was boring and repetitive, but also essential for keeping our food supply safe and helping volunteers become better-informed consumers. Normalize sharing it so often that your regular volunteers can recite along with you. They’ll be more likely to help teach new volunteers and maintain appropriate standards.
  • Empower your staff to take more advanced food safety training courses than just getting their food handlers card. Consider what other advanced certifications are out there, and see what options there are to take regular or ongoing trainings, instead of just when their cards expire.
  • Don’t be afraid to advertise your infrastructure needs. Encourage donors to contribute to your refrigerator fund or help with the purchase of a three-compartment sink instead of the food purchasing fund. Brainstorm ways that you can navigate the space and resources available to help your team be more effective based on the types of donations that you regularly receive, or that you’re trying to get more of.

The opinions expressed here are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.

Want to learn more about food justice? Subscribe so you never miss a post!

Don’t Offload Food Waste onto Pantries

The smell of overripe bananas will forever make me nauseous. Our food pantry once had a pallet of bananas donated that the person on the phone promised were completely edible, with “only a little bit of brown.” While that was technically true, the fruit was also so soft I couldn’t pick it up without it disintegrating, and there was no way that I would offer this to my clients.

(If you’re like 99% of my volunteers, I know what you’re thinking and I’m going to stop you right there. Baking banana bread requires flour, sugar, and oil, all of which are incredibly rare at food pantries. It’s also a recipe primarily familiar to Western Europeans, unlike many of our shoppers. It’s not a practical suggestion, and it drives your food pantry staff bonkers.)

I spent the next two days unpacking the bananas from their boxes and tossing them into our compost bin. The smell permeated my hair and clothes, and I regularly had to step outside for fresh air. I wanted to call the donor and yell at them to take this donation back. It was a waste of my time and a test of my patience, as well as a burden to our compost system. But of course, I couldn’t risk jeopardizing the relationship.

As massive federal cuts leave nonprofits scrambling to access resources, anti-hunger organizations are sending out pleas for community food donations. Although vastly inadequate, for many underfunded nonprofits this is their only option for continuing services.

As part of this campaign, organizations are seeking to establish or boost relationships with corporate partners like groceries stores who have the potential to supply larger quantities than individual donors.

When these relationships work, they are a boon for everyone. Businesses get public appreciation for making a donation (and the tax benefits), and food pantries get the food they need to serve their neighbors.

But just as often, these transactions act as a way for businesses to offload their waste disposal.

Too many people still hold the pervasive idea that it’s okay for people living in poverty to eat lower quality food, which justifies them donating foods that no one else wants to eat. I’m sure this banana donor genuinely believed they were helping us since they knew that food pantries were desperate for food, thanks to constant messaging they hear about donations.

Unfortunately, this attitude places recipients in the uncomfortable position of having to either silently accept the donation or risk offending the donor.

Our current nonprofit culture lives in such a scarcity mindset that it has become the norm to accept these donations, even when it brings additional costs for the recipient such as waste disposal and labor.

How can pantries advocate for quality donations?

  • Make expectations clear from the outset. My pantry developed an internal system for evaluating food that we would have done well to share externally. We only distributed food that must last until tomorrow and bring joy to recipients. While soft ripe bananas might still technically be edible, they brought no one joy. Telling donors this at the outset would help them understand what we could and couldn’t accept.
  • Engage in a dialogue with donors about the challenges of receiving food that doesn’t meet your needs. (This has the added benefit of introducing the idea that you don’t just want any foods, but have specific needs for your community.)Before a donation is even made, I like to mention the hardship of receiving food that has to be immediately tossed. Whenever possible, look at the donation before you make a commitment.
  • This demands confident leadership, but don’t be afraid to refuse donations that don’t meet your standards or align with what you were told you were receiving. While you may risk offending or losing a donor, you also set yourself up for a far more productive relationship in the future. They weren’t helping you by donating garbage, so you don’t actually lose anything.
  • Asserting donation expectations also teaches your volunteers and community the standards of your organization. Volunteers often assume that food brought into the pantry has already been determined acceptable, which means it’s okay to distribute to clients. When you don’t allow low-quality food in the door, you teach your team that your clients deserve only the best.

The opinions expressed here are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.

Want to learn more about food justice? Subscribe so you never miss a post!