"There is no available public record of anyone in the United States being sued...because of harms related to donated food." [1]
[0] https://www.publichealthlawcenter.org/sites/default/files/re...
[1] https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/restaurants-that-dont-do...
The article I cited says one organization alone "has 650 cafes nationwide and donated more than 286,000 pounds of food last year." It also mentions several other organizations who do similar work.
The root problem is people spreading this misinformation. Please don't.
Here is an organization that collects excess food from restaurants, etc, and uses it to provide 20K meals a week to hungry people (in supposedly over-regulated San Francisco no less):
If restaurants are throwing away food, it's because they don't care about the waste because there is no financial loss to them - and there are no local organizations like Food Runners to facilitate the donation.
"(2) LIABILITY OF NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION.—A nonprofit organization shall not be subject to civil or criminal liability arising from the nature, age, packaging, or condition of apparently wholesome food or an apparently fit grocery product that the nonprofit organization received as a donation in good faith from a person or gleaner for ultimate distribution to needy individuals."
The protections for nonprofits doing this sort of work are pretty extensive, in part because many such organizations in the US are religiously affiliated nonprofits.
Regarding the food distribution nonprofits:
> They assume the liability
> Right exactly. They are not liable
I'm not sure how to reconcile those comments of yours, but regardless, I think we agree that donations of food to non-profits for distribution to the needy incurs no liability for any of the parties involved, and haven't since 1996. It is a persistent myth that liability is a major disincentive to food donation, motivated by who-knows-what.
The USDA has even clearer guidance on this subject here:
https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/usda-good...
And there are no lack of organizations to facilitate these donations with no liability:
It's easier to just not donate.
You claimed "There is a super high risk of getting sued if you give away food and someone gets sick". Now if you want to continue this claim, you need to provide citations. Who, exactly says that such "high risk" exists?
Their insurers and lawyers all advised against donating unused food because of the risk of a lawsuit that wasn't covered by insurance.
So people can post all the "facts" they want to but the crux of the matter is that most restaurants are very risk averse and donating food is a risk.
I referenced a legal organization which specializes in the area. The other citation quoted two additional lawyers plus organizations which do this regularly. If you want to dispute what they said, provide your own rebuttal with citations. Don't be childish by suggesting I've made misrepresentations.
> the crux of the matter is that most restaurants are very risk averse and donating food is a risk.
The risk is so infinitesimally small that's it has never happened in the 25 or so years since the relevant legislation was introduced! I mean, if you want to describe that as "super high risk" like you did, I don't know what to tell you. I really don't.
> I worked with restaurants in a previous business. We tried to get them to donate food. Not a single one would because they were afraid of even the chance of being sued, because their liability insurance would not cover donations. Their insurers and lawyers all advised against donating unused food because of the risk of a lawsuit that wasn't covered by insurance.
Based on your cavalier attitude in spreading false information around the topic (while millions of Americans starve) I find it really, really hard to believe that this is something you would champion. Like, impossibly hard. Never mind that I'd expect someone intelligent like yourself to know what the law actually says if you were lobbying donations.
I'm frankly, very surprised you're so cavalier in spreading this misinformation. Stop spreading this lie and maybe less people will go hungry.
Frankly, I expected better from such a prominent HN'er.
Food waste is a terrible problem in this country. It is driven by a poor regulatory and legal environment that introduces unnecessary risk for restaurant owners to donate their food.
With the way things are now, it is too risky for a restaurant to donate. They haven’t been sued because they don’t typically do it.
I think major changes need to be made.
I think restaurants should be required to donate all extra viable food.
I think insurance should be required to cover those donations so they absorb the liability and therefore enforce safety.
But the way things stand now, you can’t in good conscience tell a restaurant to donate food without an intermediary organization in the area, and even then it’s risky.
No it isn't. It's perceived as too risky but that perception is demonstrably false. I've provided solid proof of this and you've provided nothing.
>They haven’t been sued because they don’t typically do it.
You can keep repeating the same things over and over all you want. But until you back it up with supporting citations it appears you're just making things up. Statistically speaking, if X00,000 restaurants and stores are doing it today without being sued, it's pretty safe to say it will be similar for X,000,000.
>But the way things stand now, you can’t in good conscience tell a restaurant to donate food without an intermediary organization in the area, and even then it’s risky.
Show me anything (tweet, blog post, whatever) from an actual lawyer or legal organization supporting this opinion and I'll donate $25 to the Food Bank of your choice (I'm serious).
I've provided legal support for my side of the argument already. It's your turn.
The thing that's so infuriating here is that that you're exasperating the problem you claim to want to solve. People scan threads and see this myth repeated so it reinforces their misconception about the matter.
Not only are you not helping, you're actively making it worse. Shame on you.
Very. I resorted to creating a cycle count in the walk in after every shift (off the clock) and giving it away pre-packaged 'meal prep' to employees, as most were just college kids, as so much high quality Salmon, chicken breast and other proteins that otherwise just ended up wasted.
Its ironic because this restaurant got a James Beard Award for sustainability and low waste practices.
In other places I just made family meal with the 'scraps' leftover for BOH/FOH family meals as we normally got off at ~2am and choices for food sucked. Its just something I had adapted to after my apprenticeship in Biodynamic Ag, and wished I saw more of it in the Industry.
I'm not sure what to make of the bike thing, as the Lime scooters I rode were already pretty beat up and I used them not long after the deployed. I can't imagine what it must of have been for these bikes, the Google bikes around the Boulder campus look decent from afar (they're non EV, I think), but I never rode one so can't speak to its life-time.
Waste in all transportation looks like this, I wish I could show the amount of recall parts I threw out on a daily basis at BMW but I signed an NDA. Its often cheaper to just discard the parts as-is at a minor loss than it is to pay for a much bigger loss for shipping back to a factory and then pay staff to sort through it and only to do the same at their local facility.
I'm talking about pallet loads of differentials, driveshafts, and engine blocks as well as crate loads of ECUs etc... Although to be fair we did sell those for metal for their junk PM prices if/when I had down time.
I actually re-learned how to solder, barely only ok at it now, because I was taking wiring harnesses and LED taillights home and tearing them apart and putting them back together.
This is how a lot of VWs sat for a little over 2 years after the buyback [1]. Some made it back into the market, many didn't and I was just glad I wasn't in the Industry by then as it made me physically ill to see the waste a SOFTWARE issue ended up costing in an Environmental level.
1: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/22/business/volkswagen-diese...
What would fix it is to let them deduct the value of the donated food/whatever instead of its cost, because then the deduction would be bigger from donating something than throwing it away.
The result would be a huge reduction in taxes on businesses, because then everybody would do it and get a ton of tax deductions, but it could be well worth it for the enormous reduction in waste and increase in charitable donations.
And it might not even cost that much in tax revenue, because it would be an alternative to a lot of the shell games corporations already play to reduce their tax burden, but in this case it would actually be helping somebody.
That's because according to the tax code, businesses can claim depreciation of all capital property. They can't claim their cost of the donated property because they are already claiming the depreciation.
> What would fix it is to let them deduct the value of the donated food/whatever instead of its cost
The IRS already bases deductions for donations on Fair-market-value (FMV) of the donation. They have an entire guide for assessing FMV for the purposes of donation:
https://www.irs.gov/publications/p561 [1]
The guide explicitly addresses the question of cost vs value and how time between the initial purchase and sale might affect the value.
This is even easier for businesses, since for things like bikes that strictly decrease in value, the donation value is probably just the purchased price - accrued depreciation (which itself was modeled using methods similar to FMV).
Food isn't "capital property" in general, so it's a different deduction, but in the end it comes out much the same. Which is what I said. The price they paid for it is already a deduction, so there is generally no further deduction from donating it vs. throwing it away and writing it off.
> This is even easier for businesses, since for things like bikes that strictly decrease in value, the donation value is probably just the purchased price - accrued depreciation (which itself was modeled using methods similar to FMV).
But that's the problem. They buy something, use it (or intend to use it but don't), and then throw it away. One way or another that allows them to write off the entire cost.
Which means there isn't any additional deduction available for donating it to a charity instead of wasting it at the end, so there is nothing there to offset their cost/risk of making a donation instead of throwing it in a dumpster, and that causes tons more stuff to end up in the dumpster.