Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> "George Shirley" > wrote in message
> . ..
>> Kathi Jones wrote:
>>
>> Here in our local all the restaurants and supermarkets donate leftover
>> food to the places that feed hundreds of people daily, Abraham's Tent,
>> Salvation Army, Potter House, lots of places. I found out the recipients
>> have to sign waivers on lawsuits for most of them and, IIRC, the state
>> of Louisiana limits lawsuits against such donors.
>>
>
> Oregon does the same thing. All the grocery stores participate with
> the Oregon Food Bank.
>
> However do not fall for the idea that it's a liability thing. That's just
> a typical corporate excuse dreamed up to put a happy Barney the
> Dinosaur face on a rather greedy and nasty practice that the grocery
> stores really don't want their customers to understand.
>
> The real reason that the grocery stores
> don't do one-off donations to shelters and the like is that they don't
> want the donated food cutting into their business. This is what Oregon
> found out. The grocery stores were quite happy to donate the old
> food to a central organization - like the food bank - because the
> food bank screens all the recipients and doesen't give them anything
> until they have signed up for all the social services that the state
> already pays for - such as food stamps (ie: WIC) The food
> bank also makes sure that the shelters that get food from them
> enforce the same requirements on their clients.
>
> What this does is the poor people only get the free food AFTER they
> have gone to the grocery stores and spent all their food stamp
> allowance. It also guarentees that the recipients only get enough
> food to feed themselves and their families and don't get a whole
> great gob of it. This helps to prevent spoilage but more importantly
> it prevents the poor people from getting enough expired food to
> sell it for drug money.
>
> If you see food wastage in your city of this magnitude and it really
> bothers you, then you ought to put together a proposal to get
> an area food bank setup. As soon as you explain to the grocery
> stores that their giving out free food is handing your food bank a
> club that it can use to get poor people into the food stamp program -
> which results in more money coming into the grocery stores since
> the poor people then go spend the food stamps at the grocers -
> they will be quite happy to grease the skids with the local politicians
> to get liability laws modified or whatever it takes.
>
> That's the cruel reality of it. To be sure, you can make the
> argument that many of the poor people aren't on the food stamp
> program simply because they are ignorant about the social
> services that their state has, and that doing it this way gets
> the poor people the help they need to pull themselves out of
> the poorhouse. That doesen't really quite hide the fact from
> anyone who can put 2 and 2 together that the grocers aren't
> participating for purely altruistic reasons..
>
> Ted
>
>
A couple of the feeding stations around here don't ask any questions, if
you come in to eat they feed you. I worked at one a few times as a
server and recognized people I knew had good jobs and money. Food
station didn't care, just said they don't discriminate.

I know some of our grocers hereabouts don't participate and, like you
said, it's a corporate policy. YMMV

George