Food Donations from Businesses
Your food donations can feed thousands of hungry individuals throughout the St. Louis bi-state region. If you have an urgent donation, please call us as soon as possible at (314) 726-5355. If this is a weekend picup, we will need advance notice of at least five days.
Donations are protected by the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act passed in 1996 by President Bill Clinton. Click Here for the full text.
- This law protects you from liability when you donate to a non-profit organization.
- It protects you from civil and criminal liability should the product donated in good fait later cause harm to the needy recipient.
- It standardizes donor liability to exposure. You and your legal counsel no longer have to investigate liability laws in 50 states.
- It sets a liability floor of "gross negligence" or intentional misconduct for persons who donate grocery products. Gross negligence is defined as "voluntary and conscious conduct by a person with knowledge (at the time of conduct) that the conduct is likely to be harmful to the health and well-being of another person."
- Congress recognized that the provision of food close to the date of recommended retail sale is, in and of itself, not gorunds for finding gross negligence. For example, you can donate cereal marked close to code date for retail sale.
Many different companies donate products including the following:
- Manufacturers: Products, overproduced inventories, products with minor packaging flaws that might not be sold to your normal customers, close-dated product, label-changes, pack changes.
- Distributors: Overstocked inventories, products that might not meet your customer's quality standards, close-dated products.
- Retailers: Close-dated product, product not fit for sale to regular customer base, excess inventory.
- Restaurants, Caterers, and Mass-Feeders: Overproduced product, cancelled events, minor production imperfections.
