By Steve Dinnen
Under the current presidential administration, the USDA’s Commodity Credit Corp. recently reshuffled its priorities and decided to cancel a shipment of food to Des Moines.
That means about 16 truckloads of pork chops and turkey, along with cheese, eggs and other high-protein foods, never pulled up to the loading dock at the Food Bank of Iowa. Its team was counting on those 400,000 pounds of food.
The Food Bank of Iowa still intends to feed people, but it now has to go the market to buy replacement products, according to its vice president, Annette Hacker. That will cost them more than $1 million, so they’re asking the public to chip in.
Food Bank of Iowa is part of Feeding America, a network of more than 200 food banks that feed an estimated 46 million people through soup kitchens and food pantries. The Food Bank of Iowa is the largest of six food banks across the state, and it distributes food to more than 700 pantries in 55 counties (including the one in Urbandale, noted above).
Hacker said the Food Bank of Iowa buys about one-third of its food. Another third is donated, and the final third has come from the USDA, until now. Rising food costs over the past few years have challenged the organization, so the unexplained and unexpected loss of the protein-rich USDA shipments is especially painful since those foods are more expensive than other staples.
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