Less-than-perfect food that merchants can’t sell to be donated to food banks
Merchants at the Jean-Talon Market discard a lot of food in a day, but most of it is still perfectly edible.
“There’s a lot of competition, so we have to show the most beautiful produce,” explained Thomas Ramon, an employee at Ferme René Lussier. “We hate to waste the food.”
Now, a new program will allow merchants to keep the food they can’t sell, and have it picked up by a local food bank.
The borough of Rosemont— La Petite-Patrie is contributing $85,000 toward the purchase of a large refrigerator where merchants can bring their less-thanperfect food, where it will be picked up by the Centre de ressources et d’action communautaire de La Petite-Patrie.
“I needed to find a way to make sure all this food didn’t go to waste; it would have kept me up at night,” said Nathalie Bouchard, the centre’s director.
A trial of the project last year resulted in 21 tonnes of food collected, half of which was given to the local food bank and the rest transferred to Moisson Montréal, which manages food banks around the city. That was with only 10 per cent of merchants participating. Now that the program is better organized, Bouchard expects more merchants will contribute.
The program is a boon to people who use food banks, because they often can’t afford or don’t have easy access to fresh fruit and vegetables, Bouchard said. The program last year allowed the food bank to give out two large grocery bags for each of its roughly 450 members per week. “It’s really life changing,” he said.
In the past, merchants had given away their discarded produce informally, often to organizations with which they had made informal arrangements, said Patrizia Cusinato, the director of communications for the city’s public markets.
This initiative ensures that there is an organized way to give and collect the food. Cusinato said she hopes to duplicate the program in all of Montreal’s public markets.