“This is something we can all agree on,” Representative Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts), who introduced the bill in December, said at the event, which was hosted by the advocacy organization Food Tank. “There’s no reason not to do this.”
Experts and advocates say the bill will make it easier for businesses and organizations to donate surplus food, thereby mitigating the climate impacts of food waste and providing food to communities in need. And it has garnered strong bicameral and bipartisan support: Representatives Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), Dan Newhouse (R-Washington), Jackie Walorski (R-Indiana), Grace Meng (D-New York), Carolyn Maloney (D-New York), and Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-District of Columbia) all spoke or shared statements at the event. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) and Pat Toomey (R-Pennsylvania) introduced a companion bill in the Senate last fall, and Senator Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) provided a statement of support.
During his remarks, McGovern was bullish on the bill’s prospects. “Whether we attach it to a bill like the Child Nutrition Reauthorization (CNR) Act or whether we have to bring this separately, I just want to get it over the finish line before the end of the year,” he said. “We have to focus on what we can get done in the next couple of months.”
And while the immediate focus was on the practical over transformational, McGovern also said that he and Representative Chellie Pingree (D-Maine)—who was absent due to a COVID-19 diagnosis—were spearheading a broader push to cut food waste and food insecurity through upcoming CNR and farm bill negotiations and the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health.
Pingree has introduced and championed several other bills to tackle food waste by changing practices in school cafeterias and inconsistencies with “use by” dates on food labels. Several provisions she introduced during the last farm bill cycle were also included in the 2018 bill.
Unlike contentious food issues like SNAP that inspire party battles, simultaneously stopping food waste and increasing food donations comes with a moral halo that appeals to both sides of the aisle (and to the many nonprofits and businesses in the room, including Weight Watchers, GrubHub, and Bowery Farming). Every day, the U.S. wastes the equivalent of 1,000 calories of food per person—enough to feed more than 150 million people each year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
That waste of resources also produces huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, and food sent to landfills becomes an additional climate liability. Landfills are the country’s third-largest source of methane, a powerful climate-warming gas. Wasted food is the single largest category of material that ends up in landfills.
Still, the EPA’s research shows that preventing waste reduces significantly more greenhouse gases than donating excess food, and ReFed ranks strengthening food rescue behind many other climate solutions. But experts at the EPA and organizations such as the Natural Resources Defense Council say that some surplus food will always exist, so eliminating the methane emissions it would create in landfills is a no-brainer. During the event, Emily Broad Lieb, founder of the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, said her team gets frequent calls asking about liability issues with food donation. “The issues being addressed in this bill are things we talk about more than once a week,” she said.
The Food Donation Improvement Act would act as an update to a 1996 law that was meant to protect companies that donate surplus food from liability for illnesses that could result from improperly handled food—something that companies of all sizes regularly cite as an impediment to making food donations. Congress passed the earlier law without putting an agency in charge of fleshing out the details, and the update would require the USDA to release regulations clarifying the protections that exist. “The whole point was to try to make it easier and make people feel more comfortable in being able to donate food. It turns out that we need it to be clarified,” McGovern explained.
It would also extend liability protection to food businesses and farms that want to donate food directly to people in need without going through a registered nonprofit. While they were not covered in the past, for example, a restaurant shut down by the pandemic serving community meals would be protected, as would a school that wanted to send surplus food from meal programs home with low-income families. Finally, it will also cover organizations and companies that want to take surplus food and not just give it away for free but also sell it at a very low cost—such as nonprofit grocery stores that accept donations.
All of the changes are modest tweaks, and advocates see them as low-hanging (ugly) fruit in the fight against food waste.
However, critics have long questioned an emphasis on food donations as a solution to hunger, since it can deprive low-income individuals of agency and does not address the root causes of food insecurity. At the event, chef and anti-hunger advocate Tom Colicchio expressed concern that lawmakers opposed to more foundational changes like universal school meals, SNAP expansions, or a higher minimum wage would point to food donation as having addressed the much deeper issue of food insecurity.
During a panel, DC Central Kitchen CEO Mike Curtin expressed dismay at a recent Capital Area Food Bank report that found that 36 percent of Washington, D.C. residents experienced food insecurity in 2021, even though 77 percent of them reported being employed.
Dining and Cooking