Bid.Buy.Donate Program Donates Meat to Local Food Banks

Youth participating at the Williamsburg Fair have spent hours working to raise their project animals in order to have them ready for fair time. Daily feeding, exercising and cleaning is a large part of what goes into having their animals in top condition. All the hard work for that year ends in the show ring.

Each youth will showcase their animals to the best of their abilities. The animals have been washed, clipped and groomed to show off its best features. Along with the show, where the animals or youth are judged, the big prize is on sale day.

Friday, August 23, was that day for Williamsburg Fair. As the exhibitors and animals walk into the show ring, each animal is then auctioned off. This event is open to the public and youth work to personally reach out to local businesses to get support for the purchase of their project animal. Buyers came from all over to participate and support the local youth. Many buyers make this a yearly event. Buyers can either send the animal straight to a butcher shop, take home, or donate the animal.

This year, the Williamsburg Farm Show had the great opportunity to partner with the Bid.Buy.Donate program with the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank. This partnership gave the buyers the option to donate the animal they purchased to the Food Bank for processing. Central Pennsylvania Food Bank coordinates the hauling and processing of the donated animals, then work to distribute the meat.

Erica Mowrer, the senior agriculture acquisition manager with the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank, calls the Bid.Buy.Donate program a "Win.Win.Win." With this program a business/buyer purchases the animal at the full bid price, the 4-H/FFA member receives the payment, the food bank receives the donation and assumes the costs of processing the donated animals and at the conclusion of the fair season, Central Pennsylvania Food Bank (CPFB) mails letters of receipt for the tax deductible donation to a non-profit. The meat is then returned to the same county it was donated in through food pantries, soup kitchens and mobile distributions.

The Bid.Buy.Donate. program started 11 years ago with the Manhein Fair, Lancaster County. Several Lancaster County businesses were purchasing and donating to the Manheim Food Pantry and as others joined in the effort, the program became too much for the volunteers at the fair to handle. They contacted CPFB and the partnership began. One benefit of joining CPFB is that the burden of the processing costs were no longer on the pantry or the buyer. CPFB was able to assume that responsibility.

Mowrer said "Due to the cost, protein is one of the most challenging foods for us to source".

The meat donated is typically processed into a ground product as it tends to go further and is versatile.

Because food pantries come in all sizes and varying sizes of cold and freezer storage, the food bank coordinated transportation of the meat. Mowrer said "we hold it in our warehouse and deliver it to agencies within the respective county with their regular orders".

The CPFB covers 27 counties from Lancaster/Lebanon in the east to Bedford in the west and from the Maryland line to the New York line.

To date, more than 170,000 pounds of meat have been donated. 78,000 pounds were donated in just the past two fair seasons. As the number of fairs increases, so have the number of pounds.

While the majority of the fairs are in rural areas, CPFB is continuing to expand the program to all the counties or areas that have an interest in the program. Mowrer said "I would want fairs that are interested in the program to know that I am willing to attend your fair board or livestock meeting to talk through the logistics of the program. I am also committed to attending the first year of the program to answer questions of buyers."

There are 18 fairs participating in the program plus the Pennsylvania Farm Show. Williamsburg Farm was the 13th for this year. These fairs cover 14 of the 27 counties that CPFB oversees.

When I asked which area has the most donated, Mowrer said "Lancaster County has seven fairs with livestock sales which participate in Bid.Buy.Donate. Manheim being the longest running, had 97 animals donated in 2023 which was roughly half of the animals that went through the sale. There is great community support in and around Lancaster which has helped the program to grow. I attended Manhaim in person last fall and was amazed at the excitement that is generated each time there is a donation. One member of the audience even rang a cowbell with each donation. I have learned though that you can't judge the success of a fair based on its size. Franklin County participated this year and sold 58 animals. 22 of those were donated, which was forty percent of the animals sold".

Through the Williamsburg Fair, three hogs were donated which yielded 306 pounds of meat. Mowrer said "this was a great start for the fair".

As the number of fairs increases, so does the total pounds which are donated each year. With the increased number of fairs and participating counties, the program is gaining more visibility, which is also helping to increase donations.

Central Pennsylvania Food Bank utilizes state PASS (Pennsylvania Agriculture Surplus Grant) or federal LFPA (Local Food Purchase Assistance) dollars to pay for processing. These funds require CPFB to use a USDA certified butcher for processing. CPFB always prefer to use a USDA butcher closest to the participating fair as a way to keep the dollars spent on processing local. If you would like more information on how to participate in the Bid.Buy.Donate. program, email Erica Mowrer at Emowrer@centralpafoodbank.org.