[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 6027]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             END HUNGER NOW

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, thousands of people will gather in 
Washington, D.C., this weekend for Feeding the 5000, an event designed 
to bring awareness to the issue of food waste. Participants will be 
served a communal meal made entirely out of food that would otherwise 
have been discarded--in other words, wasted. Since 2009, Feedback, a 
global environmental organization working to end food waste, has hosted 
dozens of Feeding the 5000 events in cities across the globe.
  I am pleased to see so many local partners--including government 
agencies, charitable organizations, NGOs, industry, and chefs--joining 
together to call attention to food waste, because the truth of the 
matter is we will need all of these partners working together to solve 
the issue of food waste.
  Last year, the USDA announced their first ever food waste reduction 
goal, calling for a 50 percent reduction in food waste by 2030. USDA is 
working with charitable organizations, faith-based groups, and the 
private sector, and I believe this goal is 100 percent achievable.
  American consumers, businesses, and farms spend an estimated $218 
billion per year growing, processing, transporting, and disposing of 
food that is never eaten. Up to 40 percent of all food grown is never 
eaten; 40 to 50 million tons of food is sent to landfills each year, 
plus another 10 million tons is left unharvested on farms. This food 
waste translates into approximately 387 billion calories of food that 
went unconsumed. With 50 million Americans--including 16 million 
children--struggling with hunger every year, these are startling 
figures.
  We know food waste occurs throughout the supply chain, from 
harvesting to manufacturing, to retail operations and consumer habits. 
But we must do more to reduce food waste at every stage, recover food 
that would otherwise have been wasted, and recycle unavoidable waste as 
animal feed, compost, or energy.
  Thankfully, there is already a lot of great work being doing to raise 
awareness about the problem of food waste. Just last week, I attended a 
screening of the documentary film called ``Just Eat It'' at Amherst 
Cinema, organized by The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts. ``Just Eat 
It'' follows a couple, Jen and Grant, as they stop going to the grocery 
store and live solely off of foods that would have been thrown away. 
Jen and Grant were able to find an abundance of perfectly safe and 
healthy food available for consumption that would have been thrown 
away.
  It is exciting to see new partnerships forming to study food waste 
and find ways to use this perfectly good food to reduce hunger in our 
communities. One such private-public collaboration, ReFED, has brought 
together over 30 business, government, and NGO leaders committed to 
wide-scale solutions to U.S. food waste.
  In March 2016, ReFED released a Roadmap that charts the course for a 
20 percent reduction of food waste within a decade. The Roadmap calls 
for farmers to reduce unharvested food and create secondary markets for 
imperfect produce. It calls on manufacturers to reduce inefficiencies, 
make packaging adjustments, and standardize date labeling. It calls on 
food service companies to further implement waste tracking and 
incorporate imperfect produce and smaller plates into restaurants. It 
urges the Federal Government to strengthen tax incentives for food 
donations and consider standardized date labeling legislation.
  The good news is that many in the industry are already taking steps 
to dramatically cut down on wasted food by implementing robust donation 
programs. For example, Starbucks recently announced it will soon scale 
up its successful food donation pilot program nationwide. In 
partnership with the Food Donation Connection and Feeding America, 
Starbucks will donate unsold food from more than 7,000 company-operated 
stores--salads, sandwiches, and other refrigerated items--to the 
Feeding America food bank network. By 2021, that amounts to almost 50 
million meals.
  Our college campuses are also stepping up. Both the Campus Kitchens 
Project and the Food Recovery Network will work with college dining 
facilities and students to provide hunger relief in their local 
communities. In my congressional district, Becker College, Holy Cross 
College, Smith College, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and 
Worcester Polytechnic Institute all have campus food recovery 
initiatives.
  Over the past 35 years, Feeding America has demonstrated an 
outstanding commitment to ensuring food that would otherwise have been 
wasted makes its way to food banks across the country and into the 
homes of families in need. There are dozens of other industry leaders 
also taking steps to reduce food waste by implementing manufacturing 
upgrades, maximizing harvests, and utilizing recycling initiatives.
  I appreciate the efforts of the Food Waste Reduction Alliance in 
bringing together industry partners to reduce food waste, shrink the 
environmental footprint, and alleviate hunger in our communities.
  Reducing food waste is one step we can take toward our goal of ending 
hunger in the United States and throughout the world. I am pleased to 
see so many partners at every level of the food supply chain taking 
action to reduce food waste, but there is still more that needs to be 
done. Let's solve the problem of food waste, and let's end hunger now.

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