Pingree addresses Food Waste Summit in D.C.

Courtesy / Office of Congresswoman Chellie Pingree Rep. Chellie Pingree D-Maine at a supermarket in Maine encouraging all supermarkets to donate perishable food to the needy.

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By Lori Valigra

U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, talked about the food waste bill she’s introduced to Congress at the Food Waste Summit in Washington, D.C., Wednesday.

The bill, HR 4184 - the Food Recovery Act, includes nearly two dozen provisions to cut food waste around the country.

“It’s comprehensive legislation to reduce the staggering amount of food waste in America while making sure more healthy surplus food gets to the people who could use it,” Andrew Colvin, deputy director of communications for the representative, wrote in an email to Mainebiz at the same time Pingree was scheduled to speak.

“Some of the steps it would take include: stronger incentives for food donations for farmers and retailers; more flexible funding programs for things like food storage, distribution, commercial composting and bio-waste energy capture; less confusing 'best by' date labels on packaged food (which often lead people to throw out perfectly good food); and public education about food waste and what steps consumers can take to reduce it,” he added. More information is available on Pingree’s website.

Other speakers scheduled to talk at the Food Waste Summit, which was hosted by the National Consumers League and the Keystone Policy Center, included U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Environmental Protection Agency Deputy Administrator Stan Meiburg, Emily Broad Leib of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Center and Regina Northouse of the Food Recovery Network.

Speaking at a press conference at the Portland Food Co-op last December when she introduced the bill, Pingree said, "Forty percent of all food produced in the United States each year is wasted. The Food Recovery Act takes a comprehensive approach to reducing the amount of food that ends up in landfills and at the same time reducing the number of Americans who have a hard time putting food on the table."

A new survey released at the summit found that food labels contribute to good waste because of confusion about expiration dates.

The survey found that one-third of adult Americans mistakenly believe the federal government regulates date labels. The only produce for which date labels are regulated federally is infant formula.

“Consumers too often interpret date labels to mean that the food is no longer safe to eat, when that food is often times still both healthy and of peak quality,” Sally Greenberg, executive director of the National Consumers League, said in a statement. This is at a time when nearly 50 million Americans live in food-insecure households, she added.

Locally, the Good Shepherd Food Bank in Auburn handles 23 million pounds of donated and purchased food each year that it distributes to 400 food pantries, food banks and homeless shelters in Maine. That translates into 20 million meals a year, according to its president, Kristin Miale, who was a Mainebiz Women to Watch 2015..

On March 23 several House committees referred Pingree’s bill to the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education for further consideration.