One day in 1969, retired businessman John van Hengel met a desperate mother rummaging through grocery store garbage bins to find food for her children. Van Hengel met the woman while he was volunteering at his local soup kitchen. She told van Hengel there should be a place where, instead of being thrown out, discarded food could be stored for people to pick up—similar to the way banks store money for future use. That mother’s wisdom gave birth to a new industry that feeds the hungry.
After that encounter, van Hengel established St. Mary’s Food Bank in Phoenix, AZ, as the first food bank in the United States. In its initial year, St. Mary’s distributed 275,000 pounds of food to people in need. Word of the food bank’s success quickly spread, and by 1977, food banks had been established in 18 cities across the country. As the number of food banks continued to increase, van Hengel saw the need for a network organization to help them grow and coordinate. In 1979, he and other partners founded a national organization for food banks called Second Harvest. The network changed its name in 2008 to Feeding America.
Today, Feeding America is the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization—a powerful and efficient network of 200 food banks across the country. As food insecurity rates hold steady at the highest levels ever, the Feeding America network of food banks has risen to meet the need. The network feeds 46 million people at risk of hunger, including 12 million children and 7 million seniors annually.
Feeding America and its partners not only lead in hunger-relief efforts, but they also lead the hunger-relief community in providing safe food. The rapidly changing product mix from shelf-stable to perishable foods flowing into food banks compels the network to develop increasingly sophisticated food safety practices so that such products reach the consumer safely. Accordingly, Feeding America is working hard to help its member food banks continuously improve their food safety acumen (see “Food Safety in the Feeding America Network,” p. 64). This important work reflects our commitment to establish, maintain and sustain robust standards that carefully steward our donors’ resources to provide safe food to the people we serve.
Taking a Giant Step Forward
Feeding America is fortunate to have an enduring relationship with Cargill. Over the years, Cargill has been generous in its support for both Feeding America’s national office and our member food banks across the country. In 2012, our partnership with Cargill took a significant step forward when Feeding America started thinking more critically about the future of food safety. With the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) moving forward, Feeding America saw the need for the network to be well prepared for the final FSMA rules. We asked Cargill to help this effort through funding for staffing, educational summits and third-party food safety audits. Cargill understood the importance and urgency of our proposed food safety strategy and got the program off the ground with a 2-year grant.
ServSafe® Food Handler Guide for Food Banking
Last year, the network recovered over 1.4 billion pounds of perishable products from retail grocery stores and foodservice locations. Over 17,000 retail locations are regularly serviced by the network; 45 percent of those pickups are executed by empowered agencies that pick up directly.
“Ultimately, the ServSafe® Food Handler [Guide] for Food Banking book allows more of our partner agencies to access perishable products from restaurants and retail stores. This allows us to distribute more perishable product and reduce the amount of product going to landfill. Without this book, our perishable donations program growth would be stunted.”
— Eric Davis, managing director of
retail product sourcing, Feeding America