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Morning News

Los Angeles Regional Food Bank Executive Director Discusses Dip in Donations

Aired December 22, 2000 - 11:46 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: A reminder now that all is not abundance during this holiday time. Food banks across the United States facing a tough holiday season, a growing demand and dwindling supplies. The problem is especially tough in Los Angeles.

And that is where we find our Jennifer Auther, who joins us from L.A. with a closer look at the problem there.

Jennifer, good morning.

JENNIFER AUTHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Daryn.

Here is in Southern California, the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank feeds about 300,000 families every day -- every week, and that's getting tougher to do; 135,000 pounds of food goes out of this warehouse every day to charities, to churches, to AIDS foundations, and to Midnight Missions. And 800,000 pounds of food, I am told, are in this warehouse right now. But that's down. That's down from about 1 1/2 million pounds of food in this warehouse, which is normally stocked here.

The problem is is that donations are down. Competition to get food into this warehouse is getting tougher. And so, on -- all of this is happening while the demand is going up, despite low unemployment. We are finding that 32 percent of the families, studied in 25 U.S. cities, who are requesting emergency help for food were actually families where at least one person was working. So we are not talking about indigent necessarily. We are talking about working poor.

I want to introduce you now to the Michael Flood. He is the executive director of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us.

First off, tell us why it is getting harder to stack these shelves. We are seeing some empty shelves here.

MICHAEL FLOOD, L.A. REGIONAL FOOD BANK: Well, after a record year last year, we have seen a dip in donations. And that, combined with the demand for food that you just pointed out, has really hit our inventory very hard.

AUTHER: What you are doing to try to get the unmet needs met.

FLOOD: What we are trying to do is contact as many from the food industry, manufacturers, retailers, brokers. This time of year we have a lot of food drives. Bring that food in, and then get it out to this charitable network that we serve that is providing this really crucial assistance, especially this time of year.

AUTHER: And hanging out here for a few hours before the live shot, I got to learn about the stiffer competition coming in from the discount stores, such as the 99 cent stores, and the Pic'n'Save stores. Explain to our audience how that is coming in to play here.

FLOOD: Well, a lot of the product that is donated to the food bank is slightly damaged or mislabeled product. And we are seeing, with the competition everywhere, especially in the food industry, our competitors are the discounters. Someone who can go in and buy some product on a few cents on the dollar, product that perhaps last year was donated to us. So that's a difficult thing for us to compete with. But we are going to try to find a way.

AUTHER: Now I understand that the USDA is usually donating about 2 million pounds more to this particular site than they have been able to do this time this year?

FLOOD: Yes, we have seen a drop in the donations through the Emergency Food Assistance Program, the USDA commodity program. And that is a crucial program with more than 300 of those 900 charitable sites distributing food to households who -- who need the food assistance.

AUTHER: Thank you very much, Michael Flood, Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, keep up the good work.

FLOOD: Thank you.

AUTHER: I am Jennifer Auther, reporting live, CNN, Los Angeles.

KAGAN: Jennifer, thank you very much.

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