Senator Aquino proposes food banks for hungry poor
Why waste clean food when it could be given to the poor?
Sen. Paolo Benigno “Bam” Aquino IV on Friday proposed a law to establish “food banks” to collect surplus, but clean items for the poor rather than consigning them to the trash bin.
In Senate Bill NO. 357, or the Zero Food Waste Act, Aquino hopes to “ultimately end the cycle of having food end up in the trash instead of stomachs.”
“Given the high price of food these days, it is unjust that a lot of food goes to waste,” Aquino said in a statement.
His proposal comes on the heels of a Social Weather Stations report that said Filipino families who experienced involuntary hunger hit 3.1 million in the first quarter of the year, half a million higher than the number in the same period last year.
Aquino’s bill seeks to create a National Anti-Food Waste Scheme, appointing the Department of Social Welfare and Development to serve as a “coordinating agency between food businesses, such as food manufacturers, supermarkets, restaurants, cafeterias and hotels, and food banks.”
Food businesses will be tasked to transport on their account their excess food to food banks or distribution centers to ensure that the surplus would remain safe for consumption.
The measure also seeks to create a Self-Sufficiency Program that provides the hunger-prone with training on livelihood and on the management of food banks, so that they would eventually no longer depend on dole outs.
Those who will “deliberately make food waste unfit for consumption” and anyone who will bar the transport of food to food banks may face the imprisonment from six months to six years, the bill said.
