Legislation Looks To Expand Food Donations

A bipartisan group of lawmakers seek to expand food donation efforts nationwide with the Food Donation Improvement Act. Dan Newhouse, Chair of the Western Caucus, helped introduce the bill, calling current protections and limits that often keep businesses and organizations from donating food "ambiguous" and "outdated."

"If you look at many groceries today, many of them have prepared foods for sale where you can literally just go in and pick from a buffet of food selections and go home with a ready-made dinner. But not all of that food gets sold."

Newhouse said the legislation would extend liability protections to donors when food is either given directly to a person in need or when a recipient pays a deeply reduced cost. He said those expanded protections would cover grocers, restaurants, caterers, school food authorities, and institutions of higher education.

Newhouse added that the legislation could help wholesalers and agricultural producers make a bigger difference as well.

"Some of the challenges to the Ag community is the inability to give directly to people in need rather than through a non-profit intermediary."

An estimated $161 billion worth of food is wasted each year in the U.S.

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