Workers at the Hollywood West Fred Meyer had a safety deadline of four hours to act to salvage thousands of perishable items after the store lost power during the snowstorm Tuesday morning.
But icy conditions in Portland prevented food pantries from getting trucks to the store to pick up the load in time, Fred Meyer spokesperson Jeffery Temple said Wednesday. Two food pantries confirmed that they wouldn’t have been able to pick up the food.
The food sat unrefrigerated as the power outage dragged on at the store in Northeast Portland, prompting employees to toss out boxes of packaged meat, cheese and juice, whole turkeys, racks of ribs and other items they feared had spoiled.
The mound of discarded food in two large dumpsters attracted a crowd of 15 to 50 people at times who started taking some of it. Employees called police when they felt the scene got tense. Activists said police were “guarding” the food. Police said they were responding to “restore order.” National media picked up the story.
The escalation highlighted intense food insecurity faced by many during the pandemic as well as a food distribution system stymied by the unprecedented loss of electricity to more than 300,000 customers around the region hit by days of ice and snow.
At least one other area grocer also reported having to throw out food because of the power outages.
Fred Meyer policy calls for stores to donate food to hunger relief agencies rather than throw it away if safe to do so, Temple said.
But he cited Oregon Department of Agriculture requirements and guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that say perishable food that goes without refrigeration for four hours isn’t safe to eat.
“Our store team was concerned that area residents would consume the food and risk foodborne illness, and they engaged local law enforcement out of an abundance of caution,” Temple said in an email. “We apologize for the confusion.”
Fred Meyer has touted its Zero Hunger/Zero Waste plan, which commits to eliminating waste across the Kroger company by 2025. In fact, Fred Meyer sent a letter to employees Tuesday afternoon praising the company’s work on the program.
Temple said Fred Meyer donated 5.5 million pounds of food last year and has partnerships with local food banks in Oregon, including the Oregon Food Bank, Oregon Harbor of Hope, Portland Rescue Mission and Sunshine Division.
The stores rely on food bank organizations to make the pickups as part of the program, but the weather prevented that, he said.
He didn’t know the exact amount of food lost at the Hollywood store or if other Fred Meyers also had to throw out food.
Kim Rodgers, a spokesperson for New Seasons Market, said five of the company’s Portland-area stores lost power and had to toss food for the same reason.
New Seasons is committed to reducing food waste by 50% by 2030 and has relationships with over 50 food recovery and hunger relief organizations, Rodgers said.
But this week she said, “No partners were able to collect and safely store product. As a result, we did have perishable food that was required to be properly disposed of under food safety regulations.”
Safeway, Albertsons and Whole Foods didn’t respond to requests for comment from The Oregonian/OregonLive.
The fraught situation at the Hollywood Fred Meyer brought home that people are going hungry in Oregon.
At Portland Public Schools, nutrition services staffers normally provide grab-and-go meals for neighborhood children on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. But those distributions were canceled Friday due to snow and Monday for President’s Day, leaving families that count on those meals short. Beaumont Middle School, one of the district’s meal sites, is about two miles northeast of the Hollywood Fred Meyer.
Food insecurity has increased significantly year over year, said Ashley Mumm, the public relations manager for Oregon Food Bank.
Roughly one in five people are food insecure in Oregon, according to a recent Oregon State University report.
Mumm couldn’t say whether her agency got word to pick up any of the Fred Meyer food but said the food bank wouldn’t have been able to collect it in any case because the storm had limited its resources.
She did note that the food bank’s Fresh Alliance initiative works to connect hundreds of grocery stores with community organizations that distribute food in their neighborhoods.
Perishable items aren’t always safe for donation, but Mumm said there is a process to check food and make sure that the food that is safe is given to people in need.
Kyle Camberg, executive director of the Sunshine Division, the nonprofit offshoot of the Portland Police Bureau, said the organization was forced to close last Thursday due to the icy conditions. It provides food and clothing to Portland families and individuals in need.
The Sunshine Division remained closed until Tuesday, which made it impossible for it to take its refrigerated trucks out for any donation pickups.
“In this particular case, we wouldn’t have physically been able to get a truck from our locations to them because of the conditions,” Camberg said.
Bacteria can begin growing on perishable food once the temperature reaches 41 degrees, said Andrea Cantu-Schomus, a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Agriculture, which licenses and inspects grocery stores.
The presence of many bacteria isn’t readily identifiable by smell, touch or sight, she said.
The four-hour rule for perishable food held above that temperature is even more strict at two hours for meat, poultry, fish and prepared foods when it comes to donations, she said.
“The department has been in communication with many of our retail firms to ensure that they are monitoring the storage conditions of the food products,” she said. “Many firms are taking measures to move perishable food products into temperature controlled containers to preserve them through the crisis, but in some cases foods were not able to be salvaged before their safety was compromised. ODA’s stance in those cases is that the food should be discarded to protect public health.”
Joy Waite-Cusic, an Oregon State University professor of food safety systems, said Fred Meyer could have opened itself up to litigation if people consumed food the store threw away and then got sick.
“They took this food that they didn’t really have a temperature history on and they put it in the garbage,” Waite-Cusic said. “They aren’t managing that environment for sanitation. Now, if somebody comes and gets that food and gets sick, there is some potential for liability for them.”
Scott Kerman, executive director of Blanchet House, said the organization served over half a million meals last year in downtown Portland – a 60% increase from 2019.
“That was completely caused by the pandemic and the economic crisis,” Kerman said. “And there is a range of food security people experience. Maybe they have no food resources whatsoever or maybe some families can make it part way through the week, but their food needs are not totally met.”
While Kerman said he wasn’t comfortable commenting on the Fred Meyer confrontation since he didn’t know the context behind the decisions to throw away the food, he did say Blanchet House “absolutely would have accepted donations from grocery stores that had to get rid of product due to the power outage.”
Blanchet House accepted donations from Portland Community College and a local high school due to the power outages.
“They called us because they didn’t want their food to go to waste,” Kerman said.
To be sure, Blanchet House has strict standards for the food they accept and won’t accept donations if, for example, meat went bad after a power outage.
“I don’t know what exactly was in the dumpster or the state of it, but at the very least, the incident at Fred Meyer highlights the need for food that is out there,” Kerman said.
