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Hi,I was very concerned when I learned that hundreds of dollars of food leftover from a library Gala Wine and Cheese (and other finger foods) was thrown in the garbage due to Covid concerns. Usually such food would go to the food pantry or homeless shelter. Is Covid in any way a valid reason for tossing good food away from such an event?Tom Coleman
Covid is mostly spread by exhaled breath and not by “fomites” (common contact surfaces). I agree that throwing out food seems wasteful. However, there may be local health department policies that dictate the practices of the caterer that provided the food. For example, I have heard that some food businesses are not allowed to re-serve foods after a certain time from preparation and that it is illegal even to hand this food out to the local homeless population; so some business operators have bagged/packaged the food and simply place the food on top of the dumpster…allowing the homeless to gain access to perfectly edible food but allowing the businesses to not breach the local laws in “giving out” the food. I suspect that this is what lead to the dumping of the food. In this situation, Covid wasn’t the problem, it was the local health laws.
