Cupboard Growing Bare at Center for Needy in Orange

The packaged pasta salad, boxed raisins and sodas are still stacked in rows at the Food Distribution Center, a large warehouse on West Almond Avenue in Orange that is home to Orange County’s largest food bank.

But the center’s cavernous, 5,000-square-foot refrigerator--which just 6 months ago was full of such wholesome foods as cheese, breads, meats and vegetables destined for food pantries and other social service groups--has been shut off.

The center supplies 221 soup kitchens, pantries, shelters and churches in Orange County that feed more than 120,000 people, but it is running out of food, and officials have started a campaign to increase donations and find new food sources.

Reasons for the shortage vary: Last year’s Midwest drought has reduced many products available for donation, the U.S. government has cut surplus commodities and some donor supermarkets have merged into larger chains that do not participate in food bank programs.

“All sources must be tapped,” said Kelly Sullivan, resource director for the center. “It is not just one sector of society that can provide it all. This is everyone’s responsibility, and the key is bringing everyone together.”

Among the options under consideration is a novel program to get tons of unused restaurant food to the needy and establishing a coordinator of employer-sponsored food drives countywide.

But officials realize that a formidable problem locally may be perception: Many people find it hard to believe that there is a hunger problem in Orange County. That misconception can make soliciting donations of food and money extremely difficult.

Service providers say the wealth and opulence of such communities as Newport Beach mask pockets of poverty. Such misperceptions “are shared by even the most caring, concerned people in the county, because they just don’t see the needy,” said Mark Lowry, director of food services for the Community Development Council, which operates the county’s other main food bank.

“Orange County has a national reputation as a wealthy, crime-free, conservative haven,” he said. “That is what we try to portray to ourselves, and it just doesn’t fit into the picture to throw in hungry people and the homeless.”

Social service officials estimate that more than 380,000 county residents are at risk of going hungry at least once each month.

“I see new faces every day,” said Bob Jordan, food room manager in the Santa Ana office of the Episcopal Service Alliance, an ecumenical service group. “They come in from other parts of the state, from Los Angeles. Many are the working poor who can’t make ends meet.”

Lowry said the Community Development Council has about 123 member agencies that served 500,000 people in 1988. For many, the need for food handouts stems directly from the high cost of housing in the county.

“We live in the most expensive housing market in the United States,” he said, “and because the rent takes a larger percentage of income, it leaves a smaller percentage for meals.”

June Marcott, program manager for the county’s food stamp program, said that for many needy--such as the elderly on fixed incomes--food is low in priority, to be dealt with after rent, utilities and other bills are paid.

“For the most part,” she added, “it’s not a question of starvation in the county but of people not eating adequately or sufficiently.”

Whether the problem is malnutrition in the county or starvation in other areas, service providers say more efficient salvage of discarded food could drastically reduce the hunger problem, locally and on a national scale.

The Second Harvest Network, a national affiliation of food banks, distributed more than 400 million pounds of discarded food in 1988. Its sponsors estimate that one-fifth of the food produced in the country is thrown out before it gets to the table.

“There is still an awful lot out there that could be channeled to the needy,” said Linda Saran, communications director for the group.

But officials admit that they may never salvage all of the 2.5 million pounds of food wasted each month in the county.

In part, officials say, they face the problems that food banks worldwide face: The mechanics of getting the available food to the people who need it is an enormous challenge, even on a small scale.

Dan Harney, executive director of the food center, said: “There are lots of sources we haven’t tapped yet, but there are many elements like transportation, health regulations, capacity to handle food that are all delicately balanced and have to operate efficiently if it’s to work at all.”

Protected From Liability

Efforts are further hindered because many in the food industry do not realize that the state’s Good Samaritan Law, passed in 1980, protects them from liability for donated food.

Many food companies regularly dump tons of usable food that is not considered salable for some reason, officials say.

“There is no question that some retailers and food processors, even when told there is no liability, sincerely believe it is still an open question,” said Frank Quevedo, director of corporate relations for Fullerton-based Beatrice-Hunt-Wesson Foods.

The center’s Harney said his food bank has the capacity to handle about 25 million pounds of food a year. Last year, the group distributed 6.9 million pounds, capturing about 15% of food that would have otherwise been thrown away.

Most of that food came from major food manufacturers but was also gathered from local supermarkets, food drives and gleaning programs, where volunteers gather produce that is left over from harvests.

Manufacturers also discard food that may be approaching the end of its shelf life but is still safe for consumption, said Quevedo of Beatrice-Hunt-Wesson Foods.

While providers say more of this discarded food can be tapped, they also call for new ideas.

Ways to Boost Percentage

Quevedo, a member of the food center’s board of directors, said the group is considering ways to increase the percentage of food it salvages.

One idea is to coordinate food drives yearly to space the flow of food evenly. Most employers hold such drives during the holiday season in November and December, he said, whereas the food need is year round.

“There are a lot of employers in this county, and if we could average 10,000 to 12,000 pounds of food a month, we could generate nearly 150,000 pounds of food yearly just with food drives,” Quevedo said. “I think this is doable. With more coordination, there would be more cooperation, and we could establish a goal.”

The group is also considering a plan--modeled on two successful programs in Atlanta and Tucson--to tap discarded restaurant food more aggressively.

Kathe Padillo, manager of the year-old Tucson’s Table, said the restaurant program there delivered more than 125,000 pounds of food donated by 100 eateries in its first year of operation.

Leftover Restaurant Food

Padillo said the program uses a large truck designed with the help of local health officials to transport leftover or unused restaurant food to their own refrigerators for delivery in specially designed plastic containers to about 55 food pantries, soup kitchens and the like.

Food workers inspect the food when it is taken in. The program ensures that it is checked again before it is served.

Padillo stressed that the discarded restaurant food is not what most people would associate with leftovers.

For example, one prime rib restaurant regularly saves the “tails” left over when the meat is cut to a standard size, then donates what amounts to “hundreds of pounds of prime beef a week to the needy,” she said.

“A whole lot of people are real tired of throwing away tons of food each night,” Padillo said. “For a (service) agency that usually has a lot of peanut butter and hot dogs on its menu to go to quiche and ruffled potatoes is fun, and it’s good, solid nutrition they would otherwise not be able to afford.”