Today, Representative Chellie Pingree announced an exciting piece of legislation that aims to tackle food waste on a national scale. Pingree’s Food Recovery Act is a comprehensive approach to the complex issues of food waste and recovery; it incentivizes donations of surplus food, clarifies misleading “use by” dates, encourages the sale of imperfect produce, and supports efforts to digest non-edible food scraps into energy. This is the type of concrete action we need to see real gains in the fight against food waste. We currently waste 40% of the food we produce, and we need to be the generation to change this!
Food Recovery Network is proud to support this bill, and extremely excited to announce its first annual Lobby Day taking place on April 4th, 2016, immediately following our National Food Recovery Dialogue. FRN Lobby Day will give motivated student leaders the chance to meet with Senators, Representatives, and legislative staff members to advocate for Pingree’s bill and other legislation related to FRN’s mission.
For more information on the Food Recovery Act, check out Chellie Pingree's discussion of the bill at the New York Times 2015 Food for Tomorrow conference.