It’s not just juices, dairy products and bread being stocked in temperature-controlled containers, hot meals of chicken or turkey with rice are also being distributed to low income workers as part of the UAE Food Bank initiative
A supplier sent around 34 tonnes of turkey to Dubai Municipality last month and a group of catering companies turned these into meals for workers.
Despite the meat being labelled to expire in a month, the turkeys wold have been consigned to waste in supermarkets.
“Sometimes we may get a product that is stuck due to a processing delay and half the shelf life is already over. The company is under pressure because they don’t have the time to put it in the market. They know consumers will push the old stock back and it will be a logistical expense to pull it all back,” said Bobby Krishna, the municipality’s food safety specialist.
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“As consumers we all have the habit of buying only the freshest food so the rest ends up as waste.”
The food is delivered by restaurants, supermarket chains, food companies, hotels to the food bank sites in Al Quoz or Al Badaa.
Supplies are checked by municipality inspectors before the food is distributed in containers maintained at 5C.
The Food Bank received more than 135 tonnes of food since April.
On a single day, the maximum food supplied to the food bank is 10,245kg, the lowest quantity is just 30kg.
September marked the largest amount of food donated with 52,335kg of supplies received.
June was the smallest with 4,845kg.
