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Comment by b5 | Hacker News Reader

In an ideal world, they would be allowed to do that. As it stands, that would potentially be a quick way for them to lose their job.

When I last worked in a supermarket (just over three years ago) taking home or giving away food that was destined for the bin was treated as theft. You could be fired for it if your manager felt that way inclined.

Several months before I started, several people at another store lost their jobs for just that. Instead of throwing out the bake-goods, they'd been giving them out in small amounts to people who were struggling.

Sometimes it was a handful of bread-rolls, other times it would be croissants or muffins. There was no loss to the company because the food had been written off anyway. Still -- it was treated as theft, and they were fired. The company would prefer the food was wasted than it feed people.

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While I certainly agree that it is a shame that food perfectly good food which is going to be thrown away can't go to feed those who need it, I think it's a bit of an oversimplification to say companies want food to be wasted rather than feed people. There are many other issues: liability if someone gets sick, employees intentionally preparing too much food to ensure extras leftover, etc.

I'm not saying these issues are more important than keeping people fed, but I do think addressing these sorts of things would go a long way to make policies allowing food to be given away more practical.

> There are many other issues: liability if someone gets sick, employees intentionally preparing too much food to ensure extras leftover, etc.

Pretty sure the liability thing is just a convenient excuse. In the US we have the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act, which protects food donors from being sued. I bet most other countries have something similar. Additionaly, nobody has ever been sued over donated food in the US.

I didn't know about the Food Donation Act! Good to know :) After some brief research, I found that my native Ontario has the "Donation of Food Act" which seems to offer similar protections. More info for fellow Canucks at the link below.

http://www.nzwc.ca/focus/food/guidelines-for-food-donations/...

Interesting, I didn't know about that legislation.

In that case, I don't follow supermarkets' logic. If donations are restricted to people who can't otherwise afford the food, and the food will be discarded anyway, why not donate it? Maybe some people will substitute donated food in place of purchasing food themselves. I wonder if supermarkets have data suggesting this is a meaningful fraction of customers.

Many supermarkets actually will and do donate food. Sometimes it's even hard to find enough qualifying organizations to take it all. Usually organizations must be documented 5031(c)(3) Tax Exempt non-profits. Donation pickups are usually run by volunteers, so can be inconsistent. Perishable items that are safe to donate usually include in-store baked bread and centrally-produced commercial bakery products. A lot of the food waste (within which I'm including near-expiration perishable foods) is simply not edible or will not be edible by the time it makes it to someone who wants/needs it, but will occasionally make it into a separate stream for reuse (for example, I've seen a wide variety of food waste make it into the hands of pig farmers). CPG/Self-stable items (which are much safer and realistic to donate) that have aesthetic imperfections will often be sent to a centralized reclamation facility and then parceled out to organizations as seen fit.

As another poster said, no one has been sued in the US for donations, but supermarket chains are also reticent about the optics of donating food that has clearly expired. Just because you won't be sued doesn't mean you won't feel some blowback in public sentiment if you cause an outbreak of food poisoning in the food-insecure demographic of the population by improperly donating food.

That act was passed relatively recently in 1996, so I can see a lot of supermarkets which grew before hand having old rules against it on the books that they never updated for stupid bureaucratic reasons; luckily I think this is one of those issues that could be flipped relatively quick by just raising public awareness of the act.

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