Meal Recovery Coalition Advances Statewide Guidelines for Safe Food Donation in New Jersey

PRINCETON, NJ – Before a meal can nourish someone in need, it must first be safely packaged, transported, and delivered. That simple truth is at the heart of a growing statewide effort in New Jersey—one that brings together public health experts, nonprofit leaders, and food service professionals to make food donation safer, easier, and more widely practiced.

At the Meal Recovery Coalition’s one-year anniversary celebration on October 20, leaders emphasized the scale of the opportunity: New Jersey generates 1.4 million tons of surplus food annually — and an estimated 25% of it consists of prepared meals that, with the right standards in place, can be safely recovered and shared rather than discarded.

“Food insecurity is a highly complex socioeconomic issue, which has multiple touch points,” said Mark Dinglasan, Director of the Office of Food Security Advocate. “That means Share My Meals, its coalitions and all of its efforts have to be plugged in and touching other sectors of the system that are trying to do this work. Guidelines create consensus, and when you have consensus, it is much easier to move a large sector towards a common goal. We, as a state, embrace opportunities to create more structure and more informed decision making, like these guidelines. So that's why I'm very excited for it. We need to be able to speak in one voice as to how we can play a role in getting more of New Jersey's food to families that need it.”

The Meal Recovery Coalition (MRC), a statewide alliance working to make meal recovery a standard part of New Jersey’s food system, has published the New Jersey Food Donation Guidelines in collaboration with Rutgers University and more than 15 partners representing public health, academia, food service, nonprofit recovery organizations, and government agencies.. These first-of-their-kind statewide standards are designed to simplify and scale the safe donation of prepared meals across New Jersey.

The guidelines aim to remove the uncertainty that often prevents perfectly good food from reaching people who need it, while building public confidence in food recovery as a safe, effective solution to both hunger and food waste.

The effort was led by Dr. Sara Elnakib, Chair of the Department of Family and Community Health Sciences at Rutgers University, and Hélène Lanctuit, CEO of Share My Meals and Co-Chair of the Meal Recovery Coalition. Together, they convened a cross-sector work group to finalize guidance that clarifies what types of foods can and cannot be donated, outlines best practices for safe food handling—including cooling, storage, and labeling—defines the roles and responsibilities of food donors, recovery organizations, and recipients, and ensures alignment with the 2022 FDA Food Code, which explicitly permits food donation.

“All too often, we hear from corporate kitchens and institutional food providers who want to donate surplus meals but are unsure how to do it safely,” said Lanctuit. “These guidelines provide a clear and practical path forward. They give food businesses the confidence to act, reduce unnecessary waste, and help ensure that nutritious meals reach people who need them. This is how we turn food recovery into a routine part of doing business.”

“Safe food donation is a public health and environmental imperative,” said Elnakib. “These guidelines are tools that food donors, recovery organizations, and regulators can all use. By creating shared standards, we are helping people take action, easing the burden on our waste systems, and making healthy prepared meals more accessible to communities across New Jersey.”

The New Jersey Food Donation Guidelines are expected to be widely adopted by state agencies. They are designed to reduce food waste, improve food access, and simplify compliance for food businesses, schools, healthcare providers, and institutional kitchens. With clear, accessible guidance backed by Rutgers public health expertise, legal research from Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic, and practical input from food service leaders, the guidelines are poised to transform how New Jersey approaches meal recovery.

The work group includes representatives from the New Jersey Department of Health, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, Rutgers University, Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, Share My Meals, Food Bank of South Jersey, Community FoodBank of New Jersey, Table to Table, Trenton Area Soup Kitchen (TASK), Sodexo, Compass Group, Flik Hospitality Group, Dartcor Food Services, Root Nine Baking Co., MEND, and others.

“The Meal Recovery Coalition has made tremendous progress in the development of state-level guidance for the donation of prepared foods,” said Kristin DeJesus, Senior Manager of Food Sourcing at the Food Bank of South Jersey. “Prepared meals are an underutilized source of food and nutrition for New Jerseyans experiencing hunger and food insecurity. We look forward to collaborating with Rutgers and the Coalition to rescue more food and reduce food waste across many sectors.”

The Coalition and Rutgers will continue to collaborate on supporting tools including health inspector training, infographics, and user-friendly communications to ensure widespread implementation. This effort reflects a growing, statewide commitment to reducing food waste and increasing food access through safe and efficient food donation.

About the Meal Recovery Coalition

A statewide partnership led by Share My Meals, the Meal Recovery Coalition (MRC) was founded in 2024 to raise awareness of and enable meal recovery as a critical complementary food source. The MRC brings together a powerful alliance of public and private partners including Accenture, Bristol Myers Squibb, The Campbell’s Company, Capital Health, Dartcor, Food Bank of South Jersey, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Sanofi, and Trenton Area Soup Kitchen—all working together to strengthen the infrastructure, visibility, and community trust needed to make meal recovery the norm in New Jersey. Learn more at mealrecoverycoalition.org