By Nina Holtz
Around a week ago, Maine Representative Chellie Pingree (D-ME-1) introduced the Food Recovery Act (H.R. 4184) into Congress. Luckily, for organizations like BFR, the central purpose of the Act is to help farms, retailers, and institutions increase their donations to food recovery nonprofits! Pingree’s Food Recovery Act will achieve this goal by taking steps to mitigate waste in every step of the food chain, from standardizing consumer labels to expanding tax deductibility eligibility for donors.
The Food Recovery Act addresses 4 sources of food waste:
- farms
- retail/restaurants
institutions- consumers/local infrastructure
institutionsSome of H.R. 4184’s proposed solutions:
- farms: support services that easily connect farmers with populations experiencing hunger, offer a greater array of market options for producers, use composting systems to transform waste instead of relying on landfills
- consumers: develop a standardized food safety labeling program for consumers, provide different “quality” (“best by”) and “safety” (“expires on..”) dates on all products
- government: create the USDA Office of Food Recovery to carry out the EPA’s 2030 food recovery goal
For information about the Food Recovery Act, please see the Bill summary here: https://pingree.house.gov/foodwaste
Want to tell your state representative to support the Food Recovery Act? Please sign and email a petition here: https://takeaction.takepart.com/actions/support-u-s-rep-chellie-pingree-s-food-recovery-act-h-r-4184-to-stop-food-waste-now
Sources:
“Food Recovery Act introduced in Congress.” (7 December 2015). Harvard Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation. CHLPI.org. Retrieved from: http://www.chlpi.org/food-recovery-act-introduced-in-congress/
“Representative Pingree takes on food waste.” (8 December 2015). National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. Sustainableagriculture.net. Retrieved from: http://sustainableagriculture.net/blog/food-recovery-act-intro/