Sponsors (5)
Official title: To authorize the Secretary of Agriculture to carry out activities to reduce food loss and waste, and for other purposes.
Introduced April 10, 2025 by Chellie Pingree · Last progress April 10, 2025
The bill aims to cut food waste, expand donations, and build local storage/coordination—helping people in need and reducing emissions—but it relies on modest funding and adds verification, reporting, and matching requirements that could burden small producers, nonprofits, and under‑resourced communities while requiring new administrative capacity.
Low-income individuals and people facing food insecurity will receive more donated and recovered food through clarified upcycled definitions, contractor donation requirements, expanded matching/technical assistance, and improved real‑time pickup coordination.
State, Tribal, and local governments (and their communities) gain federal grants and pilot funding to build storage, cold‑chain, processing, and distribution infrastructure that improves local food availability and resilience.
Farmers, producers, and small food businesses can capture new value and lower losses from prioritised research, technical assistance, and recognition of upcycled products, including opportunities to reuse byproducts as animal feed.
Small producers, manufacturers, and some food‑recovery operations will face new verification, supply‑chain documentation, and environmental‑impact requirements that increase compliance costs and could price or operationally exclude them.
The bill creates substantial administrative and reporting burdens across federal, state, and local agencies and nonprofits (including interagency coordination and new USDA capacity), which could delay startup, slow project implementation, and strain staff time.
It increases federal spending (multiple authorizations and grant pools totaling modest annual sums), creating budgetary costs that may require tradeoffs with other programs or additional appropriations.
Based on analysis of 8 sections of legislative text.
Creates a USDA Office, regional coordinators, grants, block‑grants, and an education campaign to cut food loss and waste 50% by 2030 and to improve measurement and recovery infrastructure.
Creates a permanent USDA Office of Food Loss and Waste and funds new grant, block‑grant, regional coordinator, partnership, research, and public education programs to measure and reduce food loss and food waste across the supply chain. Requires interagency implementation and reporting, expands eligibility and technical assistance for applicants (including Tribal governments), supports infrastructure and real‑time recovery tools, and aims to cut food loss and waste 50% (from 2016 levels) by 2030.