FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, November 24, 1998
Contact: Bill Adams
Telephone: 202-366-5580
DOT 212-98

Transportation Department Joins Team
To Find Ways to Move Food Quickly to Needy

U.S. Transportation Deputy Secretary Mortimer L. Downey today announced a public-private transportation project that will get more donated and recovered food to public and private nonprofit distribution agencies. Downey was joined by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman and representatives of other federal agencies and private organizations.

"Too frequently, the only thing that stands between billions of pounds of excess food and millions of hungry Americans are the trucks, trains and aircraft needed to move the food to charities for distribution," Downey said. "No one in America should be hungry so the goal of this project is to get food to the people who need it."

In the long term, the project could contribute to as much as a 33 percent increase in the amount of food recovered and food for an additional 450,000 Americans each day, according to Department of Agriculture estimates.

"Each year—in fields, commercial kitchens, markets, stores and restaurants—billions of pounds of food goes to waste," Secretary Glickman said. "We are committed to working with farmers, food manufacturers, retailers and restauranteurs to reverse this trend, to glean and recover more food, facilitate its transportation and feed the hungry in our nation."

The project is made possible by $100,000 in federal funds provided at the initiative of the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation for the Department of Transportation to develop, with the Department of Agriculture, the private sector and the transportation industry a comprehensive strategy to distribute excess food and commodities.

The two federal agencies brought together a consortium of nonprofit groups, including the Congressional Hunger Center, Food Chain, Gifts-in-Kind International, Second Harvest and the Society of St. Andrew, to facilitate the project. In the beginning the consortium will determine transportation requirements, suitable pilot projects, and a strategy for delivering donated and recovered food to low-income Americans.

The planners are committed to ensuring that all nonprofit organizations that provide food assistance have access to food assistance.

They’ve set four goals for the project:

• Design a comprehensive strategy to match donated transportation, services, and equipment with food donors and with recipient nonprofit organizations;
• Design national, regional and local transportation plans to help food providers with long distance and shorthaul freight and meet national, regional and local program needs;
• Begin pilot projects that test the strategy and plans;
• Develop and implement communication plans to increase awareness in the transportation industry of the benefits and opportunities in food recovery; help publicize transportation industry food recovery; and help freight companies learn more about the locations and processes for donating food to emergency feeding operations.

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Briefing Room