Oklahoma food donation law making small impact

HB 1542 went into effect in November, allowing restaurants and public school district cafeterias to donate food without fear of being held liable. Rep. Anthony Moore, R-Clinton, the author, said it was an effort to combat Oklahoma's high food insecurity rates. (Kennedy Thomason/Oklahoma Voice)

OKLAHOMA CITY– Watching students throw leftover cafeteria food away each day, a Clinton woman’s heart broke.

Sally James, 70, who used to work in a public school cafeteria, said the amount of food she saw tossed every day was hard to watch. It was especially difficult as a senior citizen who has to pick between getting groceries or buying medicine, she said.

Now, James works as the head cook for Mission House, a nonprofit organization in Clinton that provides food as one of its services.

James said her goal was to feed the hungry in her community.

“It used to just hurt me that all that food, all that milk, that juice, that could have went to a family or child that day that might not have gotten nothing to eat that weekend,” James said.

In November, HB 1542 became effective.

Rep. Anthony Moore, R-Clinton, authored the bill. The law allows restaurants and public school district cafeterias to donate food without the fear of being held liable. It has an exception for negligence.

For Mission House, James said the law has allowed it to meet the nearly doubled demand it has received. In May, Mission House served 1,328 dinners, she said.

“And now, we can make, you know, food boxes, and we can get this out and utilize it and give it to families and people off the street,” she said.

Both Clinton Public Schools and neighboring Arapaho-Butler Public Schools donate leftover cafeteria food, James said.

Clinton Public Schools Superintendent Tyler Bridges said the school district began donating in November.

“Generally speaking, we’ve always got things that we’ve overproduced on or overbought or whatever that is going to perish, and it’s just things that, you know, in the old days we would be essentially forced to throw away, and now we don’t,” Bridges said. “So that’s, that’s obviously fantastic.”

Bridges, a close personal friend of Moore, said it made sense for Clinton Public Schools to be one of the first districts to begin donating food.

Bridges said the school district primarily donates milk, fruits and vegetables. Prepared food is not a typical donation, he said.

In February, The Arby’s Foundation donated about $21,000 to pay off student lunch debt in Clinton.

Despite the demonstrated need of the district’s students, Bridges said it prioritizes them, only donating unused or perishable food.

With the new school year in the fall, Bridges said Clinton Public Schools will be a Community Eligibility District. That means all students will eat free breakfast and lunch, regardless of financial status. He said the district is currently at 85% free and reduced lunch.

Arapaho-Butler Public Schools Superintendent Jay Edelen said his district and Clinton Public Schools use the same food service, Opaa! Food Management, Inc., which has helped them create a food donation plan.

During the week, Edelen said prepared leftover food is donated. After lunch on Friday, fresh fruit and salad is gathered up and taken to Mission House before it expires over the weekend, he said.

Despite local participation, the food donation process is not widespread, according to spokespeople from organizations in Tulsa and Oklahoma City.

Many larger food banks and soup kitchens do not have partnerships with restaurants to donate prepared food, the spokespeople said.

Cathy Nestlen, a spokeswoman for the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma, said the system isn’t practical for food banks.

The Regional Food Bank has not received donations from restaurants or school cafeterias, she said. Instead, some of its local partners received donations from chain restaurants, such as Starbucks and Panera. Even then, she said, packaged foods are often the type of donations they are able to receive.

Oklahoma City-based Grace Rescue Mission, an emergency shelter for men, and Jesus House, a nonprofit that provides addiction resources, food and clothes, rarely to never receives donations from restaurants, a spokesman said.

Tulsa Day Center, a nonprofit that provides for basic needs, does not receive restaurant donations. Iron Gate, a nonprofit that feeds Tulsa’s hungry, doesn’t routinely get restaurant-prepared food, Executive Director Carrie Henderson said.

“We haven’t gotten any [in] a while,” Henderson said. “We were kind of getting a lot like, kind of during COVID, because a restaurant would have ordered something, and then they were, you know, closing for whatever or something like that.”

She said Iron Gate would primarily receive bulk excess food during the pandemic.

When creating the legislation, Moore said he hoped it would tackle the state’s high food insecurity rates.

“It’s just so easy, so obvious, and it’s something that, quite frankly, I couldn’t believe hadn’t been run before, and so realizing that was still an issue and a barrier to people helping people, you know, I just wanted to remove those barriers,” Moore said.

Feeding America, a national organization that fights hunger, reports one in six Oklahomans face hunger. One in four children also battle hunger in the state.

Although it has yet to be implemented on a larger scale, James said the extra donations make a difference for Mission House.

“Food is really expensive right now,” James said. “It’s hard for us to be able to buy salads so they get, you know, nutritious meals with fresh vegetables and stuff that they [the school districts] bring us and everything.”

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