It happens every day. You may find yourself at a restaurant or event and see perfectly good food sent to the trash bin at the end of a meal. Like you, we started to ask why are we wasting so much food and what can we do to change the situation? Many people in this country struggle daily with the ability to purchase enough food to feed their families. Yet nearly 40 percent of food goes uneaten in the United States according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. This translates into the loss of more than 20 pounds of food per person, each month.

So, what can be done to help reduce food waste? In your community, restaurants, hotels and catered events can donate their surplus food to a worthy cause. This is a great way to help local missions and other charitable organizations that serve those who require assistance get much needed access to meals in your community.

We encourage everyone to participate in tackling this problem and to donate excess food. Most importantly, this can be done in a way that reduces the risk of food related-illness. Much of the risk lies in the process of donating, transporting, or receiving surplus foods or prepared meals. To make the process as simple as possible, we have created simple guidelines and requirements to help facilitate the safe donation of prepared meals and cooked foods. These guidelines are designed to not only protect the residents who will be eating these prepared meals, but are also designed to help protect the donors, transporters, and recipients of the donated foods.

While current laws such as the federal Good Samaritan Food Donation Act and the California Retail Food Code also offer protections, we took the protections a few steps further in guiding donors, transporters, and recipients on maintaining food temperature controls, correct packaging and storage, and other safe food handling requirements.

Our guidelines and requirements for safe food donations include:

• Making sure that foods are only provided by a permitted restaurant, hotel, food distributor or processor, or by a catered event.
• Making sure that recipients also hold a public health permit to ensure volunteers and other staff know how to handle, store and serve prepared meals correctly.
• Encouraging recipients to inspect perishable and nonperishable foods for any signs of spoilage or adulteration.
• Requiring recipients to wash whole produce before preparing as part of a meal or serving.
• Requiring that hot foods be maintained hot at a temperature of 135 degrees or higher, and that cold food remain cold at a temperature of 41 degrees or below.
• Enforcing safe food deliveries in vehicles that are clean and free of vermin.
• Ensuring foods are kept in sanitary, food-grade containers during transport.

We encourage you to think about food waste and how you can contribute to reducing it in your community. Talk to a local business about donating surplus food to a charity or local mission by following our guidelines. Charitable organizations are generally very careful to accept only those food items that are safe to serve. A special public health permit is NOT needed in order to donate food. Most missions or charitable organizations receiving donated foods already operate under a public health permit, and the businesses that provide food also hold public health permits.

Our guidelines and requirements help ensure the health, well-being, and dignity of all residents who enjoy donated foods at missions or other charitable organizations. We remain diligent in ensuring that all food – whether donated or not – is wholesome and safe.

For more information about food donation safety requirements, please go to: http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/eh/docs/WhatsNew/FoodDonationGuidelines.pdf.