For the congresswoman leading the fight for better laws around food waste, using up leftovers was just a way of life.
鈥淚 come from New England, home of Yankee thrift,鈥� Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) told The Huffington Post. 鈥淲asting food wasn鈥檛 even a concept. But I realized, once I grew up, that this wasn鈥檛 the case for most Americans.鈥�
In December, Pingree introduced the Food Recovery Act and the Food Date Labeling Act in the House 鈥� the first-ever congressional bills on the issue. The legislation takes an expansive view of food waste, with provisions on everything from farm waste to imperfect produce to more extensive USDA research.
Pingree gave HuffPost an inside look at her campaign during a phone interview that touched on how food waste intersects with cultural values, climate change and education.
How did you first become interested in food waste as a target of legislation?
It first came to my attention at The New York Times鈥� Food for Tomorrow conference in 2014. That opened up my awareness of how much we鈥檙e throwing away: about 40 percent of all the food produced each year! It sounded so massive that I wondered how we鈥檇 possibly go about tackling this. I also heard Jonathan Bloom [the author of American Wasteland] speak, and I realized that this isn鈥檛 just a matter of ideology: it鈥檚 a real, tangible problem that the government can impact positively.
What is your personal background with regard to food waste?
I come from New England, so we had that Yankee notion that nothing should be wasted, ever. I鈥檝e lived on a farm for much of my life and even have one today [Turner Farm in North Haven, Maine], so I鈥檝e never thought twice about keeping a can on the countertop for food scraps or compost, or reusing food as animal feed. But I realized that America has really lost a generation of people who know how to use leftovers or freeze their food. Many people, for example, never knew it was OK to keep a compost bucket on their countertop!
Is this a bipartisan issue?
Absolutely. The chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture, Rep. [Mike] Conaway of Texas, is a Republican and has been a great partner on this: he organized a hearing with experts in food waste and industry stakeholders. I see it as an issue that doesn鈥檛 have a lot of organized opposition. And even in the corporate sphere, our bill has received endorsements from Campbell, Nestle and other huge food companies.
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