Indiana Food Waste Leadership & New York Food Waste Legislation

the In 2015, Food Rescue asked the Indiana Department of Health and State Department of Education to establish and publish guidelines for schools to donate unopened and unpeeled items from the trays of students that went uneaten.  Together those two state departments cooperated to produce the only guidelines in America for the safe donation of an estimated 22 million food items in Indiana, which represent a "drop in the bucket" of the 1 billion food  items wasted nationwide annually in our schools.  Vermont will be publishing their own guidelines soon, after consulting with Food Rescue on a conference call in 2015 with 5 government officials regarding Indiana's guidelines.

Which brings us to New York.  Senate Bill S854 was introduced and passed the New York State Senate to.direct the Commissioner of Education to write voluntary guidelines for school food recovery in coordination with the commissioner of Agriculture. 

While it's groundbreaking that the state Senate of New York recognizes the importance and impact of enacting school food recovery guidelines like the ones in Indiana, it's also a tragic symbol of how numb we are toward food waste, even while 1 in 6 Americans are food insecure.  There is still much work to be done.

But for now it is worth celebrating that the movement has in fact captured the attention of an entire legislative body of an influential state such as New York. 

---