According to a new study by Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County and Feeding America, more than 277,000 people in Orange County, California need the help of Second Harvest and its community partners to feed themselves and their families.
Some of those families will benefit from a donation of 217,667 pounds of fresh produce, made possible by exhibitors of the recent PMA Fresh Summit Convention and Expo in Anaheim.
The produce was collected from the convention center expo hall by approximately 300 volunteers from the Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County, a chapter of Feeding America, a national non-profit organisation that works to feed more than 37m people a year.
Over the past decade, PMA exhibitors have donated more than 2.9m pounds of fresh produce to communities in need in the United States.
'Feeding America is extremely grateful to PMA’s exhibitors who have gone to great effort to provide this generous donation of fresh produce to the Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County,” said Bob Aiken CEO of Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organisation.
“PMA goes to great lengths every year to rescue, package and transport a considerable amount of nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables to our member food banks, so that they can be distributed to low-income Americans, who are in need of food assistance,' he added. 'Feeding America will provide food to 46m Americans this year, including 12m children and 7m seniors.”
