A terrible person named Ann A. Crane is upset! In the L.A. Times! About charity! Ms. Crane runs a catering company and she is not happy about a proposal by David Lazarus that a clearing house be set up for the 1.5 million tons of food that California hotels, restaurants, and caterers throw away every year. Anne A. Crane thinks this is an undue burden for her:
When a client and I plan to donate food, it costs me money. Let’s imagine I have taken all the leftover food back to our kitchen. I then have to have someone transfer the food to disposable containers (I pay for the containers). I spend my time calling around to find out which local agency can take the food (this is often not an insignificant step). Then one of my staff has to drive the food over, in my van with my gas, and then drive back (the biggest challenge for many of these charitable organizations is transportation, as they often do not have trucks, volunteers or sufficient demand to be able to come and pick up the food). At every step of the way, I am paying an employee.
HOMG that sounds almost as hard as recycling! Also, weird that she is against Lazarus’s proposal, because if the clearing house he envisioned came into being, she wouldn’t have to do all of the things she listed that are so hard. Phone calls! I picture Ms. Crane, a single tear running down her cheek, as she lights a hundred dollar bill and burns it while not throwing away food.
This is a woman whose company will get you a camel or a kangaroo if you want one at your party. Or a mime. A MIME. Which I am definitely looking into if Meatball gets married. And yet she cannot fathom joining with others in her industry to see that less food gets thrown away and more goes to those who might, you know, eat it. You, Ms. Ann A. Crane, definitely need to shut up.
I am not getting married by a goddamn mime, Snacktime.
A mime on a camel!
I hate mimes! I also hate camels!
You guys missed Anne Crane’s point.
This guy David wants to legislate the giving of leftover food to a central clearing house.
Legislate means it’s mandatory, like if you don’t do it, you get a fine or go to jail.
Charity should always come from the heart and be 100% Voluntary with a capital “V”
Next thing you know food blogs will be on the “lets legislate them out of some charity money” list 🙂
Although Ann may not be the best person to represent a community forced to give away money and time, she does have a point.
No. You and Ann are both double plus wrong.
1. The proposal does not legislate the giving of food to a central clearing house. The writer proposes that restaurants and caterers call a central number when they had excess food, to let charities know it was available. If no one showed up, they could toss the food. But a previous version of this law was shot down by the restaurant lobby.
2. Crane said that she would incur liability if she donated food. This is wrong. The federal Good Samaritan act protects those who donate food, among other things. Lazarus mentions that there is a proposed bill to have the Health Department post information about the Good Samaritan law so that uninformed people like Crane can stop making up excuses. Again, there is no law requiring that people donate food, GOD FORBID.
3. You’re a patronizing, mansplaining, right wing blowhard and we’ll be deleting your comments from here on.
Wait – Meatball is marrying a mime?? Awesome.
It’s only legal in Vermont and Hawaii to have a person & a mime marry as of publication, but they’re working hard to rectify that.
Sounds like they need something like SF’s food runner program. Like the article says, restaurants have to pay for composting, but if a charity like this comes along and picks it up it’s free. Restaurants get rid of excess food, people who need food get it, everyone wins. It’s really, really not a lot of effort, for restaurants. Really.