File:Syd Mandelbaum Rock and Wrap It Up! Food Waste.webm

English: Syd Mandelbaum founded the global- awarding winning anti-poverty think tank, Rock and Wrap It Up! to honor his parents’ survival against all odds from the horrors of Nazi concentration camps. Rock and Wrap it Up!, with 5,000 members in 500 cities and five countries, feeds millions of hungry each year and teaches how to use contracts to obligate excess food from events.

In this presentation, Syd talks about how Rock and Wrap It Up! has been able to safely recover food from sports stadiums, movie shoots, hotels, and other facilities for decades. He also goes in-depth about the Good Samaritan Act and Food Donation Act, which he helped to establish.

The presentation was featured on the “Donating Unsold Food – A Primer on Liability, Food safety, and the Good Samaritan Act” webinar on November 12, 2014. To download the presentations and other materials, please visit: /redirect?event=video_description&v=10Y7lwIEQY4&redir_token=3JdkDJFK0Rf2QVtuyJ-CDGHY6El8MTUwOTUwMTMwN0AxNTA5NDE0OTA3&q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.usda.gov%2Foce%2Ffoodwaste%2Fwebinars.html

Additional information:

14.3% of American households found it difficult to put food on the table at some time in 2013, yet 31% of food at the consumer and retail level goes uneaten (USDA ERS).  Of the estimated 133 billion pounds of food that goes uneaten every year, much of it is perfectly safe and nutritious and could have been donated to hunger relief organizations to feed hungry people.  Sadly, much of this perfectly good food ends up in landfills.

How can we change this situation? Many managers at farms, food processors, supermarkets, dining facilities, and restaurants say they are worried about donating wholesome unsold food because of fear of liability.  Some say they don’t have the proper food safety processes in place to handle food recovery and donation programs.

The presentations from this webinar discuss liability concerns and clear up misconceptions that may keep companies from donating food.  The webinar covers food safety issues and tips and the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act, the federal statute that gives liability protection to those who donate food.