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.

  • @[email protected]English
    10•1 month ago

    Where we pour bleach on food that has been discarded to make sure that someone who is hungry can’t eat it?

    What the fuck? Seriously?

    • Clay_pidginEnglish
      7•1 month ago

      Yes, grocery stores sometimes do this because they are afraid of being sued by someone who gets salmonella or something from the dumpster.

      • queermunist she/her
        English
        9•1 month ago

        This is what they tell the public.

        In reality they just don’t want homeless people near their dumpsters.

        • @[email protected]English
          3•1 month ago

          Or to give away anything for free. They’d rather destroy it than give away something that could’ve made money.

          • queermunist she/her
            English
            4•1 month ago

            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.

    • @[email protected]English
      4•1 month ago

      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.