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Canada: Why home gardeners can’t donate their extra veggies to Sudbury food banks

Advocates say the bottom line is there just isn’t enough food to go around, to feed the city’s most vulnerable populations experiencing food scarcity and regulations like this don’t help. (Dan McGarvey/CBC)

Section 29 of Ontario’s Food Premises Regulation says food banks can’t accept donations from home gardens

By Sam Juric
CBC News
Aug 17, 2020

Excerpt:

Erica Lagios, the co-ordinator with the food policy council, says she first encountered the regulation and its restrictions earlier this year while working with the Community Garden Network.

Lagios had been promoting a joint initiative called the Home Garden Project, which was designed to encourage people to use the pandemic as a time to plant their own gardens at home and donate their excess produce to food banks in the region.

Lagios said she soon learned that donating produce from home or community gardens is in violation of Section 29 of Ontario’s Food Premises Regulation.

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“When they are getting food it has to come from a source that is either provincially or federally inspected,” she said. “Donations coming from a home garden or a community garden don’t receive those kinds of inspections so a food premise like the food bank would not be able to receive donations.”

Read the complete article here.