NATIONAL SUMMIT ON GLEANING AND FOOD RECOVERY - A CALL TO ACTION Release No. 0314.97 Fact Sheet NATIONAL SUMMIT ON GLEANING AND FOOD RECOVERY - A CALL TO ACTION SEPTEMBER 15-16, 1997, WASHINGTON, DC THE PURPOSE OF THE SUMMIT The Summit's goal is to begin the development of a national plan to eventually help feed 450,000 additional hungry Americans each day. The Summit will help expand the growing national movement to use gleaning and food recovery in the United States as an inexpensive means of helping to feed the hungry. A Summit goal is to identify ways to implement a 33 percent increase -- by the year 2000 -- of the amount of food annually recovered, gleaned, and distributed to Americans in need. This increase would provide an additional 500 million pounds of food a year -- enough food to support meals to some 450,000 Americans a day. The Summit will issue a call to action to every sector of American society -- individuals as well as institutions -- to make concrete, measurable commitments to fight hunger, particularly by doing more to recover and glean excess food. The Summit is seeking the involvement of: large corporations and small businesses; faith-based organizations and religious groups; labor unions, trade associations, and professional organizations; U.S. Cabinet Secretaries and Members of Congress; charitable foundations and non-profit organizations; state, tribal, and local elected officials; farmers, ranchers, and orchard growers; shipping, trucking, and railroad concerns; community and youth service organizations; food manufacturers and distributors; anti-hunger activists and food recovery practitioners; restaurants, cafeterias, caterers, and food service professionals -- in short, anyone who is associated with feeding people in this country. HOW THE SUMMIT WILL WORK The Summit will identify ways to increase food recovery. Future efforts are likely to include donating more food; providing more transportation for recovered foods; giving more monetary and in-kind contributions to food recovery organizations; combining food recovery with job training; ensuring the safety of recovered foods; creating new food recovery programs; expanding the capacity of existing food recovery programs; increasing the ties between food recovery and nutrition education; publicizing food recovery efforts; and devoting more full-time national service and part-time volunteer hours to food recovery. -more- -2- The Summit will take place September 15-16. The largest Summit site will be in Washington, DC, where, on the 15th, there will be a plenary session, followed by food recovery and gleaning community service projects; on the 16th, there will be hands-on workshops. Participants at the Washington site will develop broad, systematic ways that the entire nation can work towards the goal of a 33 percent increase in food and gleaning. Local sites throughout the nation will participate in the Summit through a live satellite broadcast and local events. On September 15th, over 50 locations in every region of the country will downlink a live broadcast of the plenary session in Washington. Participants at many of these sites then will hold discussions about ways to achieve the 33 percent food recovery increase locally; will sponsor food recovery and gleaning community service projects in the area; or will hold their own workshop sessions. The Summit will help the nation understand the three basic steps in food recovery and gleaning. The Summit will explain that virtually all food recovery and gleaning efforts require three basic steps: getting the food, preparing or sorting the food, and distributing the food. The Summit is a unique public/private partnership. USDA is joining with four leading national non-profit anti-hunger groups to sponsor the Summit: Second Harvest, the Chef and the Child Foundation, Foodchain, and the Congressional Hunger Center. WHY THE SUMMIT IS NEEDED A new USDA study estimates that more than one-quarter of all food produced in the nation is wasted. The study by the USDA Economic Research Service, the first of its kind in 20 years to examine and quantify food loss, found that, in 1995, about 96 billion pounds of food -- or 27 percent of the 356 billion pounds of the food available for human consumption in the United States -- were lost at the retail, consumer, and food service levels. The full extent of food loss probably is even greater. The study looked only at food loss by retailers, consumers, and food service establishments. Pre-harvest, on-the-farm, farm- to-retail, and wholesale losses were not measured. Given that we know significant losses occur at each of these levels, the actual amount of loss is probably far greater than the 96 billion pound figure. Food waste is not only a tragedy because it could used to fight hunger, but food waste also harms the environment and increases local taxes. Municipalities across the country spend about $1 billion a year in tax dollars to landfill or otherwise dispose of the 96 billion pounds of wasted food. While individual families do waste food, the study made the more important overall point that food is lost in every single stage of the food production and distribution system. While it is true that individual families often throw out large amounts of food, it is more significant to understand that vast amounts of food are systematically lost on farms, at manufacturing plants, during distribution, at wholesale markets, at restaurants, at farmers' markets, at cafeterias, and at supermarkets. -more- -3- Even a small boost in food recovery could feed millions of hungry Americans. On average, each American consumes about three pounds of food a day. If even 5 percent of the 96 billion pounds now wasted were recovered, that would represent a day's food for 4 million people. If we recovered 10 percent or even 25 percent, that would provide food for 8 million, or 20 million people, respectively. Individuals, companies, government agencies, and organizations can all do more to recover food. Individuals can donate canned and boxed goods to food drives and can donate their time and money to food recovery organizations. Individuals can work with companies, government agencies, and non-profit organizations to mitigate food loss throughout the production and distribution system. The National Summit on Food Recovery will attempt to spur such changes. While food recovery efforts will never be a replacement for a strong federal nutrition safety net, recovered food can be a critical and nutritious addition to the diets of millions of low-income Americans. The federal government always will have a critical role in helping feed low-income Americans, but public/private food recovery partnerships are one tool to help supplement the traditional federal role. # For more information contact: Chef and the Child Foundation: Pat Thibodeau Executive Director (904) 824-4468 Congressional Hunger Center John Morrill Director (202) 547-7022 email: nohungr@aol.com Foodchain Christina Martin Executive Director (800) 845-3008 Second Harvest Christine Vladimiroff Executive Director (312) 263-2303 U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Recovery and Gleaning Initiative Joel Berg (202) 720-6350 jberg@usda.gov