Contract mutual aid orgs they well come get it

This is horribly frustrating mate. And thanks for what you do!

The edit makes me think this is done on purpose to try and force a slip up so they can justify taking away your funding and it’s making me hella mad.

You’re doing your part, but someone else isn’t. Everyone should learn as part of their upbringing that wasting food is bad - just like littering and thousands of other things. Unfortunately we live in a world where someone has to be fined for them to realise they’re doing something wrong.

I would set up a food collection spot just a few feet outside and ask people if they are kind enough to consider taking a case or two to donate there. This way I can redistributed the way I want with that second charity.

Thank you for your service ʘ‿ʘ

Send in Newman, he can make a room full of muffin stumps disappear.

We are not allowed to simply give it out to anyone. This is not like a church pantry where all of the food is donated by the community and’s parishioners. There is government funding, as well as private businesses, which I am guessing get their money back from the government for funding this. If we could simply give it to anyone we would not be in this situation.

Yep. That’s really dumb. When people talk about government inefficiency, this is what they mean.

Is there any chance you have enough (wo)manpower to prepare and preserve it? Even watermelon can be pickled, dehydrated or made into a jam.

They do this because they can write off the “donation” (e.g. garbage disposal)

All of this produce was going to go bad, they know what date it’s going bad, but they overproduce or customers cancelled orders or under ordered.

UNFI, the massive breached company, is going to have this same thing play out across the board from product wasting away in their warehouse.

I’m one of the returns clerks in a Costco. First thing we do every morning is process stuff to send the food bank. It irks me how much stuff we aren’t allowed to send because the manufacturer won’t allow it. Even despite that we send a lot every day. Everything that does spoil at the food bank goes to a local pig farm, who donates pig products back to the food bank whenever he can.

I have a large ice chest and a heavily restricted diet due to medical issues and my food banks won’t give me fresh produce unless I show proof of residency (they want you to have a refrigerator). The little daily snack pack with oreos and soda they give you otherwise isn’t worth the trip.

Tax Churches Into Oblivion. A society that runs off a charity is a society that doesn’t function. Christians always side with the fascist when they come to power. The private businesses are the fascist. The United States supported the Nazis during World War II. This was all to weaken the Soviet Union. America is an imperialist empire and fascists are the useful idiots of empire. The bureaucracy is just basically how things work. And there are rules for things for a reason. Trump and Elon Musk love bureaucracy. They just want it to work for them. Capitalism is a wasteful system. It prioritizes the profit incentive and sometimes over producing and outpacing your competitor until you corner the market. Charity is just one way to manage perception especially if you get less taxes. It doesn’t make sense on purpose because fulfilling people’s needs is not its purpose. Charity is a business and it’s not about helping people. Even if it’s a Christian church. We no longer produce our own food, and big agriculture is the only thing we got. We have enough to make sure people don’t go hungry. But the capitalist wants you to go hungry. Or pay the highest price possible. But less than the guy down the street, that’s competing with them. The nonsensical madness that surrounds me on the daily is just, it makes sense if you know how things work.

For the watermelons you might try to contact a local vintner. They may be able to process them into wine and/or liquor.

Do you have a Sikh temple nearby? They cook for the community.

My workplace used to donate all its leftover food to a local meal service charity, daily. But they refused to take fresh fruits and vegetables because they just spoil too fast. It was sad because those are the foods people need the most but they are logistically very difficult to deliver, as you are witnessing.

Silly idle thought (for real): Suppose in a situation like this, particularly if people complain on the internet drawing attention to the fact that there’s 1000s of pounds of produce in a space that likely doesn’t have funding for strong security measures, a group of interested parties brought some trucks and took it without explicit permission or consent from the organization.

What’s the impact to the org in situations where this isn’t given away to unauthorized parties, but gets stolen instead?