Eight organizations across Canada have been picked to distribute millions of pounds of food from the previously announced $50 million food surplus program, Marie-Claude Bibeau, minister of agriculture and agri-food, says in a news release on Aug. 13.
“These eight impressive partnerships between food businesses and not-for-profit organizations, target those food commodities that had significant and urgent surpluses, making a difference both at the level of the producer and the food bank, from coast-to-coast-to-coast,” Bibeau says in the release.
The Surplus Food Rescue Program was designed to address urgent, high volume, highly perishable surplus products falling under fruit, vegetables, meat and fish and seafood, the release notes. The surpluses were mainly created by the pandemic which caused shutdowns in the restaurant and hospitality industry which left many producers without markets for their food commodities.
The eight organizations picked to distribute food cover every corner of the country and include not-for-profits such as Food Banks Canada and Second Harvest, and La Tablée des Chefs.
The program will redistribute food such as potatoes, walleye, chicken, turkey, eggs, and more. Overall there will be approximately 12 million kilograms of surplus food given to insecure families that would otherwise have been wasted, the release notes.
