The day before, similar boxes were packed with USDA Foods. Houston Food Bank uses an overhead conveyor system to bring commodities from a sorting room to the packing room/tables; they also take the competed boxes to those who load them onto shipping pallets.

Houston Food Bank Operations Associate Director Marly Maskill provided the following information; in general, the food bank usually receives approximately 10 trucks per day and distributes approximately 230,000 meals per day; in response to Hurricane Harvey, the food bank has been receiving approximately 30 trucks per day and distributing approximately 500,000 meals per day.

Maskill continues, “FY17 we received over 23.7M lbs of USDA Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) commodities. Their products are mostly shelf stable commodity items, but also frozen meat, produce, eggs & cheese. We distribute this product to our agencies directly & in our backpacks & share your holiday boxes. In response to Harvey, the USDA allowed us to use the TEFAP product we already had in inventory to support disaster relief. Any client who is not on disaster SNAP is eligible to receive this product. The USDA has been actively communicating & working with us to make sure our needs have been met. They've also committed to replenishing the product that is distributed for disaster response so our clients who generally receive this product don't have to go without.”

USDA Foods include The FNS Food Distribution Programs' mission is to strengthen the Nation's nutrition safety net by providing food and nutrition assistance to school children and families and emergency food assistance programs; and support American agriculture by distributing high quality, 100% American-grown USDA Foods.

The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) is a Federal program that helps supplement the diets of low-income Americans, including elderly people, by providing them with emergency food and nutrition assistance at no cost. It provides food and administrative funds to States to supplement the diets of these groups.

USDA Photo by Lance Cheung. Original public domain image from Flickr

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