Outrageous - Winn Dixie throwing out food
 

Can someone explain to me why a local Winn Dixie trashed thousands of pounds of perishable food. A refrigerated truck would seem reasonable among other options to save this food for the needy.

There's another thread on this. They did not throw out "perishable" food. They threw out spoiled food. Their generator ran out of fuel, so they lost refrigeration. So they didn't know about it until the day after the storm. Too late for a refrigerated truck. They cannot donate food that has gone bad. They are not the bad guys you think they are.

Would you like to make the needy people get sick?
Grocery stores monitor the food temp during power outages. Once an item reaches unsafe temp, it must be thrown out.
People throw a fit when a restaurant gets caught serving food that wasn't stored at proper temp, but they want to give it to people in need?

I suspect that much of the food was spoiled since it sat in the store for hours. I don't believe they manned the store during the storm. You do know that if you lose power the stuff in your refrigerator is done after 4 hours, less if you open the doors? All it would take is one spoiled food served to a needy person for some in this community to think it would be OUTRAGOUS that they would give food that was possibly tainted.

In fact, Winn-Dixie is one of the good guys -- they have arrangements to give food to a food bank/kitchen five days a week. They'd do it seven but the food bank can't pick up on weekends.

The real issue is why it happened. Every commercial business I know of who has back up power also has an emergency fuel delivery contract with severe penalties for failure. I managed 45 data centers scattered all over the globe and we had these contracts in place everywhere. Usually what happens when you have a known event as this was, the fuel company that has that contract will just park a full fuel truck close by. When is is an unplanned event, earthquake, flood, fire, they will do what ever it takes to get the fuel in place. I think at one time or another, I have seen every possible emergency that exists and I never lost a center due to lack of diesel fuel. True our tanks were always much bigger, but we also would consume a lot when those generators were running. I well remember the Y2K bill when I switched every data center over to back up power 12 hours before and 12 hours after midnight local time. This was a very easy problem to solve.

Most of the Supermarkets around the area donate on a daily basis. Bakery supplies left from the day before, vegetables, breads etc. I go shopping early in the AM and see the donated items being picked up.

Good for you. I still think it's Mondaymorning quarterbacking.

State health code

As the original articles explained winn d. Ran out of fuel and had to trash the food rather than take a chance of poisoning people. With all the stores they have it can be tough to be perfect with this situation. I thank them for what they do most of the year for the homeless and hungry.

I actually didn't like the title of the thread, "Outrageous". That was kind of an attack. Just sayin'

Lighten up folks---just be glad we didn't retire somewhere in the Keys.

Agree. They have a long road ahead of them........we have a few shingles.

Would anyone actually think that a business would throw away their product if there was any other solution?
That's like saying that Best Buy threw away a hundred flat screen television sets for no reason.
Believe me, if Winn Dixie could have found any way to keep that food, they would have,

They had to toss it. Hot food for immediate consumption must be kept at 135 degrees or above. Cold food must be kept at 40 degrees or below. For storage, my refrig is set at 33-34 degrees the freezer is at -5 degrees.

It's really a pity it couldn't be used but they did what they had to do under the circumstances.

Keep your food safe and beer cold. :beer3: