Question: What do grocery stores do with fruits and vegetables that are going bad?

[Mike 03]

There must he hundreds if not thousands of pounds of produce that go bad each week at the average grocery store. (And maybe meat too). Does anyone know what happens to all of that? It would be absolutely scandalous if it were thrown in the rubbish.

I am seeing more and more people on the streets here begging for money for food. I'd be shocked if we had less than 15% unemployment in my town. Do you think the food that is near expiration is used in some good way?

Just curious.

[Midlodemocrat]

1. Well, I know that Second Harvest in NYC partnered with

restaurants and stores back in 2002. My SIL worked diligently with them prior to her death in 2003.

Not sure about entities.

[Xipe Totec]

2. They used to throw it out

now they keep in the shelves until somebody buys it.

[rocktots]

3. Talk to the veggie guy

Get a juicer, and talk to the veggie guy about getting some stuff they throw out. Apples can be used, and are sometimes a bit better when they are not so ripe. You will still pay, but very cheap.

[SoCalDem]

28. Our produce guy used to save some of it for a lady who had rabbits..n/t

[hlthe2b]

4. In areas with hog farming, it is used for feed...

Of course, that is pretty over-ripe stuff... I would think that they would donate to food banks or at least soup kitchens that would use it immediately, but it is a good question

[TlalocW]

5. They ought to make banana nut bread out of the rotten bananas

That's how mom always made it.

TlalocW

[Ediacara]

10. That happens sometimes

But the volume of bananas used to make banana bread is pretty small.

[Warpy]

6. The stuff that's black and slimy is trimmed and trashed

Some of the balance is sold for feed, some is donated to local food banks and soup kitchens.

Grocery chains write unsalable produce off as charity and everybody wins.

[Mike 03]

14. I hope you are right.

In this small town, I can't see any reason to let it rot. We have a lot of war veterans here who would starve without help.

[BrklynLiberal]

7. I see packages of "old" fruit and veggies on sale for much lower prices.

I do not know what they do when they are beyond being sold....

[slackmaster]

8. We used to hurl them at the wall and let them fall into a dumpster at the store where I worked

:D

[Ediacara]

9. It depends on how durable and/or how bad the produce is

The more durable produce (apples, squash, some melons, outdated salads, etc) get donated to the food bank, the other stuff is trashed.

And quite frankly there's nothing scandalous about throwing away a rotten orange. No one will eat rotten food, no matter how desperate they are.

[The empressof all]

11. Starbucks gives to Non Profits and Gleaners.

Starbucks has a policy of only using freshly ground beans. If ground beans for are around for more than a few hours they are dumped into a donation bin. When I worked in a shelter we picked up a few pounds of ground beans every week along with day old pastries. Most grocery chains also work in conjuncion with food banks and donate older produce, meat and canned goods.

If you'd like to get involved in the Gleaners movement to get fresh food to those in need google Gleaners. Many communities have groups working on getting these kinds of donations in place.

Here's a link to one of the Gleaner organizations in my state

http://skagitgleaners.org/

[Gormy Cuss]

12. Ask at the store. Many supermarkets do partner with local food banks and kitchens.

The food kitchens can use lots of food up pretty quickly.

[Mike 03]

16. Thanks, I hope you are right.

I appreciate the serious response. Next time I'm there I will ask. Duh, I should have done that before.

[msongs]

13. our local store says liability issues dictate how they handle stuff - >

used to have a dead vegetables rack each morning with big bags of off produce like mushrooms, peppers, and lots more.
then their attorneys recommended stopping that as they might be liable for a customer's illness if such food had been identified as less than prime.

too bad. in european local markets produce used to be priced according to condition, becoming cheaper as it "aged" until it reached a condition where nobody would pay anything. that's too sensible for American stores.

Msongs

[Ikonoklast]

15. I worked in retail food for near on twenty-eight years

Perishable product such as produce that was not of salable quality would be given to a food bank, and the rest was disposed of. We used to save all trimmings from lettuce, cabbage, etc. for a local hog farmer, and he took all the off-quality merchandise we could give him. Saved in disposal costs, big time.

Fresh meat that didn't sell but was still edible was re-wrapped and frozen, and once a month the food bank would pick it up. Same with out-of-date smoked meat products.

Non-perishable food (canned goods, cereal, boxed mixes, etc.) near expiration was usually marked down if within thirty days of going out-of-date. After that, it was disposed of as food banks were leery of accepting them. After all, some of those canned good may be ten to twelve months old already, and it was better to be safe than sorry.

[jedr]

25. You covered it pretty well;

Also ,slightly over ripe produce gets cut up and put on vegetable and fruit trays. Some goes over to the hot deli and used. Food banks get their share and the farmers are using rotted products for animal feed. Anything that poses a health risk is destroyed ( Dumpster divers pose a liability risk to stores and dumpsters are often locked). I also work in the food industry and most stores now require produce managers to have a minimum of inventory on hand in the evening, depending on early deliveries for the next days needs. Stiff competition makes "shrink" (waste) something that is closely watched. Fear not , up until the Bush administration , we had the safest food in the world and we will again..

[nancyr]

17. Here it's thrown away.

Though there is one local grocer who takes it home to feed his hogs.

[LeftyMom]

18. I know a few places around here give their usable-but-not-pretty stuff to Food Not Bombs,

and a few others toss it.

The local food co-op donates really generously. Raley's (regional grocery chain HQ'd here) and Trader Joe's dumpster a lot of perfectly good food.

[Inkyfuzzbottom]

19. At my smaller local store

they discount the fruit, veggies and meat and put it in a special discount section. I often buy it on my way home from work to cook that evening. Sometimes I buy up the meat and put in in the freezer for use later. It's a great way to save money.

[Xithras]

20. Around here it becomes animal feed. Some info.

Many of my companies clients are groceries. First off, you have to understand that many large grocery stores do NOT actually own the produce they sell. They arrange to receive produce from a wholesaler and remit payment to that wholesaler only for produce that sells. The store doesn't make any profot on food that goes bad, but it doesn't take a loss either.

This complicates things a bit. Stores, in this case, cannot simply give away dated produce because they don't actually own it. Where I live, wholesalers have established a secondary market with farmers and deliver waste food for animal feed. In areas where no such secondary market exists, the wholesaler may just tell the store to trash the leftover fruits and veggies. If the store were to simply give away the food, the wholesaler could demand that the grocer PAY them for that food, since the grocer "sold" it, albeit at no cost. A wholesaler would probably win that lawsuit.

Secondly, in many areas there ARE groups that do exactly what you are suggesting. Not all wholesalers toss or resell old veggies. Some do donate the food to charities who distribute them to the poor. This allows the wholesalers to write off their potential loss as a charitible donation. Whether or not the food is donated often comes down to the financial bottom line of the particular wholesaler...if the tax savings exceed the potential profits from a secondary sale, it will get donated. Otherwise, it gets fed to the animals or turned into mulch.

[notadmblnd]

21. I'm pretty sure the little grocery store in my neighborhood...

gets it out of a neighboring town's store dumpster.

[Cleita]

22. Well I have see them sold in bargain bins for less than fresher stuff in some

of my markets. Also, I remember reading stories back decades ago when the homeless problem started becoming chronic about shelter workers raiding garbage bins where perfectly good but unsellable produce was being thrown away. It was illegal and I think a compromise was reached for the markets to donate that produce to the soup kitchens instead of throwing it away.

[PetrusMonsFormicarum]

23. Freegan bounty

by the receiving doors in the natural foods grocery where I work. Day-old bread and produce are made available daily, plus we work with local charitable orgs and gleaners for perishable grocery items. Keeps the really militant freegans (around here, also called "opportunivores") from trashing our dumpster area.

Even though we have the free table, we still have to boot people out of our dumpsters. When they accuse us of throwing away good chow, we explain that A) our composting dumpsters contain meat and meat juices, and B) if it's going in the dumpster we have made the judgment call that it's no longer edible.

Yeah, our free table has gotten pretty busy lately. A couple of weeks ago, a hobo-chic hipster held up a free bag of grapes. "Are these organic?" No, I replied, and he promptly dropped them and stormed away.

[Ikonoklast]

24. He'll starve on principals.

Either that, or he's not really hungry.

But he is an asshat.

[petersjo02]

26. Local grocery stores cooperate with charitable orgs

who provide meals for the poor and homeless.

[pinto]

27. Most groceries here slash meat on last day of sale. Good buys, good to cook same day or freeze.

I'm on a limited income and have gotten to know the general "mark down" days and shop for protein with an eye on freezing for later.

A lot of stores around here also have cooperative relationships with the local regional food bank who then parcels out items to local, smaller non-profit support agencies. The food bank has the same arrangement with our large produce growers, harvesting crops left in the fields after first pick, or perfectly good culls from the packing houses (CA).