Food Sharing Program Environmentally Valid : Ventura County is a leader in an effort that keeps good foodstuffs from being wasted. Instead it is shared by the poor.

Thanksgiving season is a time when the words food and share take on special meaning. Today they also have an environmental meaning.

An Oxnard organization that incorporates those words in its name--FOOD SHARE Inc.-- has since 1979 been doing what its name implies in a big way. FOOD SHARE is a local affiliate of Second Harvest, an organization covering all 50 states. FOOD SHARE provides food and other grocery store items to almost a hundred thousand needy citizens in Ventura County all year around, with emphasis on the holiday season. That totals over nine million pounds each year.

FOOD SHARE is part of a statewide effort linking local businesses with the needy people under the rubric, “Donate, Don’t Dump.” Its work is both environmental and charitable. Perfectly good food that would be wasted, simply because labels are misprinted, cans dented, boxes filled incorrectly or because of mishaps in processing and shipping, is put to good use.

Firms that donate to FOOD SHARE--such as Carnation, Dole, General Mills, Tropicana, Vons and Procter & Gamble--otherwise would have sent it to a landfill. I calculate that it would amount to a pile equal to 5,000 car wrecks, or the yearly output of garbage for a city like Needles, Calif.

Enlightened companies have learned they can get involved in good works and save on landfill fees, although it’s a bit crass to bring up the matter of money. According to John Healey, director of the California Emergency Food Link in Sacramento, “Oxnard is in the middle of some really good people--a lot of really giving people. That’s one of the reasons for their success. They’re strong because of the community.”

Healey, the contractor hired by the state to coordinate the distribution of food donated by corporations and farmers, told me that Ventura County is second only to Los Angeles County in the amount of groceries collected and distributed to the needy.

This doesn’t mean that we’re the second most needful county. Actually, we’re about average in terms of homelessness, unemployment and poverty. It means we’re extraordinarily well organized at taking care of our fellow citizens, and keeping things out of the landfill.

For instance, Proctor & Gamble’s Oxnard plant had a packaging problem with some Pampers, and earlier this month gave $40,000 worth of them to FOOD SHARE.

Del Monte’s local facility donates bananas. And produce growers and shippers regularly call when they have overstocks or fields that can be gleaned by FOOD SHARE volunteers.

All of this is distributed from a 12,000-square-foot warehouse to more than 250 charitable institutions in the county.

Jewel Pedi, executive director of FOOD SHARE, described an innovative program, called RPM, for Rescue of Prepared Meals. Local restaurants such as the Ranch House in Ojai and Amelito’s in Camarillo have been handing over excess menu inventory to FOOD SHARE. The food is then trucked to local charity institutions such as battered women’s shelters.

Nationally, according to the U. S. Department of Agriculture, 20% of the food produced never reaches anyone’s table. Because of groups such as FOOD SHARE an astounding national annual total of 640 million pounds of grocery store items are being rescued rather than being dumped in landfills.

That’s a volume almost as big as everything we landfill in Ventura County each year.

As Pedi characterized it, “we’re standing in the gap to break the chain of food waste.”

A cause for Thanksgiving both environmental and humane.

Richard Kahlenberg, who writes the weekly Earthwatch column, has been reporting on the environment since Earth Day I. Nowadays he recycles everything. You can write to him at 5200 Valentine Road, Suite 140, Ventura, 93003, or send faxes to 658-5576.

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* FYI: Retailers, restaurants, growers, manufacturers or individuals with items that might be appropriate for the FOOD SHARE’s “Donate, Don’t Dump” program at Thanksgiving or any time of year should contact Jewel Pedi at 647-3944.