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this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2026
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A Boring Dystopia
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It absolutely sucks, but from a company perspective it's not about greed, it's about legal liability. If they provide food to a charity and someone gets sick from it, they are responsible for it. So the legal danger of giving away your "close to be expired" food is fraught with corporate danger.
Does it suck. Yes. Absolutely. But Joe opened them up to a potential lawsuit.
In the US they're already shielded from liability by the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act (and have been for 30 years)
So Joe didn't open them up to anything.
The real reason they do this is because there's always going to be some employee who abuses the system, so it's easier to do a blanket ban than police their employees.
Not equally enforcing the rule for everyone would actually be what opens them up to a lawsuit, because the fired employee can say, "but you let Bob do it once so you're discriminating against me."
Indemnity agreement, done.
This really should be the first go-to.
Old goods? Assign liability to the food bank and let them handle sorting.
Tossing perfectly edible food in the trash because it's no longer pretty and (acknowledging) I won't buy it, it is just insane.
I try to buy bruised food when I can because I know others won't. a wrinkly bell pepper, cucumber, or zucchini will be exactly the same once I chop it up and put it in my meal.
this has "green m&m, blue m&m, they all end up the same color" energy and i love it.
In the US, both the business and the food bank are already shielded from liability. It's been that way for 30 years.
I absolutely agree. I wasn't trying to defend the company's practice. Just explaining why they make those kind of decisions.
I wasn't sure if this was the issue or if it was because the cookies technically needed to be expired first to donate?
Everyone misses this point. Lawyers have turned into leeches of society sucking the empathy and fun out of everything so everyone is scared to get sued. On the flip side its so god damn easy for corporate lackeys to say 'no cuz lawyers' just to make their job incrementally easier rather than actually doing it. Its a shitty cycle and I've seen it too much in corporate America.