SECRETARY DAN GLICKMAN SECOND HARVEST NATIONAL CONFERENCE Release No. 0218.97 Remarks OF SECRETARY DAN GLICKMAN SECOND HARVEST NATIONAL CONFERENCE SAN DIEGO, CA -- JULY 1, 1997 INTRODUCTION Thank you, Christine [Vladimiroff, Second Harvest President and CEO], for the unwavering leadership you and this organization give our nation. I see a lot of friends around this room. I've been to many of your food banks and seen firsthand the amazing work that you do. I'd especially like to recognize Virginia White, who heads up the Wichita Food Bank in my home state of Kansas. She walked in with me today. We've worked together for many years -- from my days in Congress to the Administration. I'd also like to thank those of you who went above and beyond the call of duty in getting food to families displaced by the Midwest floods. Second Harvest sent more than 2 million pounds of food. Your efforts were greatly appreciated by the flood victims, by myself and President Clinton. I understand that he made a surprise appearance here the other night. I've been instructed to let you know that the Secret Service took great offense at your characterization of the work they do ... They don't let you off nearly that easy... You should try getting into a cabinet meeting sometime. I'd also like to mention that with us in spirit today is Shirley Watkins, newly nominated by President Clinton to be USDA's next Undersecretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services. Shirley's spent her life in the anti-hunger community. Many of you know her well. She's looking forward to meeting and working closely with all of you. You know, I talk a lot about hunger -- to farmers to Fortune 500 CEOs and everyone in between. But I have to admit, I feel a little silly sitting up here in front of all of you. It sort of reminds me of the story about the Chicago Bulls rookie years ago. I can't recall his name, but I guess that's sort of the story. His career never really took off. His one claim to fame was that he scored his first professional point the same night his teammate -- Michael Jordan -- scored a record 69. Asked later by a reporter about this, the rookie smiled and said, 'I'll always remember this as the night Michael Jordan and I combined for 70 points.' That's sort of how I feel right now. Most of you fight hunger every day. You don't get your picture in the paper or a lot of public accolades, but you do help ensure children don't go hungry, senior citizens get the food they need, and families who've fallen on hard times get back up. I don't have to tell anyone here about the human face of hunger, nor the human cost. You see it every day. You are the innovators and the leaders. You know, there's an old Chinese saying, where many pass, there a road is made.' I see a wide open road out in front of us. Here in San Diego, it leads out to the old Naval Training Center. It's been closed down for military purposes. But as far as I'm concerned, it's still engaged in our nation's defense. There, today, you'll find the San Diego Food Bank -- filled with an army of good Samaritans who prepare 16,000 meals every day for struggling San Diego families. They are great patriots ... as are all of you who are here from food banks across the country. The work you do is critical to winning what must be America's great war of the 21st century: The war on hunger ... the war to help 30 million Americans regain their dignity, their independence, and their American dream. Thank you for putting yourselves on the front lines. You know, Christine wrote me a letter not too long ago on the subject of the United States' commitments at the World Food Summit. There, the U.S. agreed to help lead a worldwide effort to cut in half the number of the world's hungry by 2015, including cutting in half the number of America's hungry. Christine's point was domestically why stop there? I agree. If we want to lead the world toward a less hungry future, why not eliminate hunger here in America, and show the world that, yes, it can be done? I'm under no illusions about the magnitude of that task ... especially in light of all the hurdles being thrown in our way -- from the great experiment of welfare reform to the strict spending constraints of a balanced budget. We do have a long road ahead of us, but I refuse to let that be an excuse for giving up. If we abandon the goal of ending hunger in America, it will take with it our very humanity. Now is a time to regroup. To build across government, corporate, and non-profit efforts ... to do more together to pool and leverage all the various resources at our disposal. USDA intends to live up to its end of the bargain. In the next few weeks, we will be making large purchases of dehydrated potatoes, apricots and peaches -- all for use in The Emergency Food Assistance Program. I also want you to know that I know that USDA is not immune to bureaucratic impediments that too often get in the way of getting food to people who need it. And, I want you to hear today from me my personal commitment to cutting through the red tape, and getting the job done right. Your work is too important. You know, I recently had the opportunity to see a film that I understand you got a chance to see yesterday -- Hidden in America.' One thing I appreciated was what a good job it did of shattering the myths of America's hungry. It shows a proud, committed parent who lost his job and nearly everything but his kids to a family illness. The film poignantly reveals what is too often hidden in America -- the hunger of our children. One in 3 of our kids live in families that struggle with hunger -- whether it's skipped meals the last few days before a paycheck or missed doctor's appointments in favor of putting food on the table. These are choices that no American family -- no family in the world -- should ever have to make. I believe that all of us have an obligation to parents who want to work ... if they could just get the opportunity. We also have an obligation to take care of our kids -- all of them. Here in America, there can be no such thing as other people's children. How do we meet these obligations? First and foremost, we must stop debating the simple fact that the federal government has a huge role to play. There can be no substitute for strong federal programs. That's how I feel. That's how President Clinton feels, and that's how the American people feel. Look at the history. America's School Lunch Program was founded in the wake of World War 2 as a matter of national defense. Kids were showing up for the draft malnourished. School lunches were started as a national nutrition intervention to literally build strong Americans. Today, for millions of our kids, it's the one square meal they can count on every school day. This time of year, we're working hard to expand the Summer Food Service Program to reach more kids when school's out, so kids have a chance to be just that -- kids. USDA also manages food stamps which help struggling families eat. And, we have the Women, Infants and Children program which I'm proud to say today reaches more new moms and babies than ever before in history -- giving them the nutrition they need for a healthy life. This year, there was an attempt to cut WIC funding. One of the most persuasive arguments I saw against that effort came from a Republican Congresswoman. She xeroxed a newspaper editorial supporting WIC and wrote to her colleagues, don't let this be School Lunch 2.' She understood that fighting federal anti-hunger efforts is a losing battle in the eyes of the American people. This is not a nation that wants its children to go to bed hungry. So, there is no substitute for these bedrock federal programs. But there is certainly a whole lot more we can and must do to supplement them. USDA FOOD RECOVERY STUDY One area ripe with potential is food recovery and gleaning. I know it's nothing new to this audience, but it's still a fairly fuzzy notion for many Americans. The basic concept is simple: From a farmers' field, to a supermarket bakery, to a restaurant refrigerator, to a wholesalers' warehouse -- so much food goes to waste. Why not give it to people who need a meal a whole lot more than a dumpster does? The question I always get in return is: Well, how much food is actually wasted? That's a question that's not really been answered for 20 years. Some folks looked at plate loss in the home. Others examined grocery store produce losses, but no one was looking at the big picture ... until now. Today, I'd like to announce that USDA has just completed the first comprehensive study of food loss in America in 20 years. I'd like to recognize the work of USDA's Economic Research Service, and in particular, the leadership of Linda Scott Kantor, in putting this study together. They pegged America's food loss at a jaw-dropping 96 billion pounds a year -- a full 27% of the U.S. food supply ... lost. This figure, I might add is extraordinarily conservative. It does not include the fairly sizable but hard-to-measure waste that occurs before the retail phase -- for example, farmers who don't bother harvesting bruised or stunted fruits and vegetables, and wholesalers who dump unsold product. ... 96 billion pounds ... lost in supermarkets, restaurants, homes. If we could recover just 5% of that food, it would be enough to give 4 million Americans a day's food ... not to mention save $50 million in landfill costs. Most of the waste comes from the obvious suspects -- highly perishable items such as fresh fruits and vegetables, milk and grains -- foods that lost their store value way before their high nutritional value. It's a lot of waste. 60 billion pounds of fresh fruits vegetables make it to market every year. Nearly 1/3 o f them rot -- either in refrigerators or in the grocery store. Consumers waste the equivalent of a third of a glass of milk per American per day. At the retail level, we see a lot of loss due to cosmetic reasons -- bruised fruit, dented cans, crushed packages. There's also a fairly high volume of new products -- whether it's a new flavor, or brand -- that flop and get pulled from the shelves and discarded. Day-old bread and seasonal items, such as Halloween cookies, also tend to outlive their saleability long before their edibility. In restaurants, the trend toward upsizing entrees is leaving more leftovers. Unexpected fluctuations -- such as bad weather -- can cause a quick glut of food on hand, and increasingly large and diverse menus make efficient food use a challenge. How do we get this food to people who desperately need it? It's not easy. The study also highlights the hurdles of food recovery which all of you know only too well: Someone's got to recruit the folks with the food and link them with groups in their community that can get it to hungry families. Transportation, storage and packaging are not cheap. Second Harvest spends at least $5 million a year just on transportation. Getting consistent, reliable volunteers, and training them in safe-food preparation can also be a challenge. Whether you're canvasing a farmers' field or dialing up supermarkets, food recovery is hard work. But, as this study shows, there is enormous potential for growth and serious progress in the amount of food available to hungry families. Just consider this fact: Second Harvest is the single largest non-profit anti-hunger campaign in the United States today. You're made up of 183 food banks that serve more than 50,000 local food pantries, soup kitchens, homeless shelters and more. You help feed some 26 million hungry Americans every year ... all with about 1 billion pounds of food. Just imagine what you could do with just 5% of what America puts in its trash can every year. That would be nearly 5 times your current food supplies. Food recovery is one way everyone can lend a hand against hunger. Right now, we're getting the entire federal government into the act. I'll never forget the day I told President Clinton that USDA's cafeteria in Washington donates its excess food. His eyes lit up. He wanted all federal agencies to do it and not just at their headquarters. Now, Justice is looking at federal prisons, Interior is talking to park concessionaires, and Defense is eyeballing their mess halls. It's something I urge people to do wherever I go. I speak to the National Cattlemen, I tell them we need more beef at the soup kitchens. At USDA's Farmers' Markets, the leftover food gets sent to a community kitchen. I speak with county government folks, I ask them if their cafeterias are hooked up with the local food bank. If not, I tell them to call 1-800-GLEAN-IT, and the folks there will give them a contact in their community. I talk to a wholesaler, I ask if they've heard of the Good Samaritan law, which frees good-faith donors from liability -- clearing the way for food donations to be as common as recycling -- throughout the commercial food chain. SUMMIT ON FOOD RECOVERY That's something we can all work toward together. With that goal in mind, we're organizing a National Summit on Food Recovery. I'm proud to have Second Harvest as a co-sponsor of the event, along with the Congressional Hunger Center, the Chef and the Child Foundation and Food Chain. The summit will be held in Washington, D.C. on September 17th and 18th. We're hoping to have satellite links across the country, so those who can't get to Washington, can have mini-summits in their own communities that tie into a national strategy. It would be a great help if all of you -- when you return home -- could take a leadership role in getting the grass roots involved in this effort in your community. With me from my staff today is Joel Berg who'd be glad to help you make the connection. We're setting our sights high. Our goal will be to increase the amount of food recovered and distributed to hungry families by 33% by the turn of the century. That's about a 500-million pound increase ... enough to feed some 340,000 Americans every day. The price of participation in the Summit is a concrete commitment to do more. You can give more food, open your wallet a little wider, offer in-kind contributions or transportation. You can commit to enhance your existing efforts -- linking food recovery to job training, say, or serving more people. It's not a closed list. We're looking for new, creative and expansive ways to take food recovery to the next level. This is all part of a serious effort you will see over the next few months -- from USDA and from this Administration -- to push the issue of hunger to the forefront of the American conscience ... ... and push more people to do more than just talk about the problem. We'll bring everyone to the table -- large corporations, small businesses, faith-based groups, labor unions, professional organizations, elected officials from all levels of government, folks in agriculture and in transportation, community service groups, anti-hunger activists ... anyone with an interest in finding new ways to fight hunger ... except maybe Mike Tyson. In terms of the private sector, I know we have some leaders here with us today. Many of you here from the food industry are donating your products, your kitchen space, some of you are even involved with welfare-to-work efforts. You're setting the standard for corporate responsibility, and I hope your efforts prove contagious. Together, we can make this summit a real catalyst. CONCLUSION You know, recently, President Clinton was here in San Diego announcing that he would launch a national effort at racial healing in America. He feels -- as many do across the country -- that as we head into an increasingly diverse future, we've got to find some common threads with which to weave one America. I think that his endeavor has a lot of overlap with grass-roots anti-hunger work. We, too, are pushing to break the interlocking cycles of poverty, hunger and a snuffed-out American Dream. We, too, demand basic compassion for our fellow citizens. And, in moving forward, we, too, seek to transform how Americans deal with one another and view themselves in relation to their community. The work that you do offers an awe-inspiring glimmer of what a renewed American spirit could accomplish. President Clinton once said, there is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.' Let me just say that standing up here right now, I see what is right with America. Together, we can see it across our land. As we celebrate our nation's independence, let's challenge our fellow Americans to join us in this battle and claim a new independence ... a country finally free from hunger. Thank you. #