How many different sources contribute to stocking your pantry or supplying your meal site? As a partner agency you and your staff are receiving food from many food streams- the loving community, Oregon Food Bank, grocery stores, producers, and farmers. As diligent and food savvy as we all are, every source could contribute a product that is not appropriate to distribute. Examples that make food unfit for distribution include: spoiled, unlabeled, compromised packaging, part of a recall, expired baby formula or food, or unfrozen meat that is past the sell by date. I am sure your organization has some personal examples to draw from. Your program holds a responsibility to be the last line of evaluation before food is given to the community. You have the training and experience to support a strong food evaluation program that should include giving feedback to your food source partners. Do you remember a time when OFB had fish that was labeled for bulk use to order, but made it available to pantries that were more likely to distribute it without the outer packaging to individual households? The inner packages looked good, and were of a good size for a household, but they lacked a list of ingredients and identified allergens. This could pose a hazard to consumers who didn’t know there was fish or wheat in the package. Please seize this moment to tell yourself that you are knowledgeable about food safety, and connected to food safety experts (that’s us in Network Compliance!). If any questions about evaluation, safe handling, and screening of all foods that come through your program’s doors, please reach out to us by phone or email. Take some time to meet with your volunteers to encourage thorough and thoughtful food screening. We will link out some resources for food safety education on our blog to support. Know that food safety work is equity work.