Wish I could get my hands on some of this.

[journey11]

An estimated 40% of food grown in the US is wasted. My chickens would have a heyday with all of that lettuce. Or at least it would be nice to compost. I wonder why they've not come up with a better solution for this? Maybe the produce growers could make a deal with the poultry or swine farmers to give the extras to the animals. A lot of it is fresh and just can't get sold. Then there's the little bags to deal with. Nothing yuckier than a slimy bag of rotten lettuce. It wouldn't be feasible to pay someone to separate out the bags. Most of the other stuff is in boxes and easier to dump. Here was the article on it as well. It's just disturbing for me as a practical minded person that they can't come up with a better way. So many going hungry in this country and others. I hate to see such waste.

 

[Smart Red]

For a while we had a janitor (also a farmer) who took the many containers of tossed out student food home to feed his pigs. Not allowed. The Feds stepped in and ordered all uneaten food be thrown into the garbage. Nothing was allowed to be used in any way. If uneaten food can't be used as animal food, hungry people don't stand a chance.

 

[seedcorn]

Problem is that swine can transmit diseases from people to them to people. Yes I remember when hog farmers gathered left over school food.

 

[journey11]

We had a member here, (Monty maybe?) who used to get old produce from the grocery store and they stopped that. I used to work for a homeless shelter and Pizza Hut would donate the leftovers from the buffet and some regulator stopped that. Stopped the grocery store from donating their day-old baked goods too. Such a shame.

I hate that it all goes into landfills too. That takes up more space and I guess they said it causes more methane gas too. It's too bad they can't at least separate as much of the compostables as possible and just have a huge compost heap. One man's trash is another man's treasure! Maybe the gov't could create a tax incentive for farmers to dispose of the leftovers in a more environmentally friendly way? Even giving it to individuals to compost or feed to their own animals could be done with no skin off of the farmer's back since they'd just be dumping it anyway. Who could eat ~100 lb. of lettuce before it went bad anyway?

 

[curly_kate]

I just heard a news story on this. One of the issues with composting the old fruits & veggies is that so many of them come neatly packaged in plastic containers now. Whoever was being interviewed about it said that it was way too time-intensive to de-package everything to make it worthwhile. :/

 

[thistlebloom]

That seems like a good job for inmates or welfare recipients who we are already paying for.

 

[journey11]

It could be dispersed in smaller lots to individuals who would like to use it and would be willing to take the time to separate out the packaging in exchange for the benefit of feeding it to their livestock. At least some of it could be recovered that way.

I thought it was odd that the bagged salad couldn't be delivered to stores within a 2 week time frame. That's a long time sitting around. Certainly not as fresh as advertised.

 

[so lucky]

I used to work at a grocery store where the produce department manager was allowed to take home the outdated produce to her animals at home. It was eventually stopped, I think because the privilege was being abused. Probably lots of good generous plans like that were abused and then done away with.
When my mom was in assisted living, then the nursing home, she marveled at the food that wasn't eaten. I know the cooks were not very creative, so those 4 times a week chicken breasts were baked to the consistency of rubber, served and thrown out regularly. Same for the two big strips of bacon per person every morning.
The amount of waste everywhere is disgraceful. I am glad it is finally being looked at. Maybe some of those silly regulations will be eased.

 

[Beekissed]

Saw an episode of Dirty Jobs where an old fella near Las Vegas feeds all the food scraps from the restaurants there in the city to his pigs. Has a huge pig far and they eat nothing but these food scraps. If he can do it, seems like others could as well.

Should get them all together with all the tree service guys who dump at the landfill and they could all dump in the same place, producing tons of wonderful compost to use at the same farms that produced the food in the first place.

Our whole country has grown so used to waste that it's criminal.

Think of how much food is wasted at buffets alone...irks me that people take things to the table they aren't going to eat. A lot of people do this to "get their money's worth", never thinking about how much that costs the restaurant and also how much food is wasted. It's horrible.

And the one that no one likes to talk about...letting chickens live until they die of sickness or old age, then their bodies are wasted, unable to be used for food. HUGE waste of good food, simply because folks can't do a simple little job and utilize it for food.