McCain donates 300,000 meals to Second Harvest

Toronto, ON (June 10, 2021) – McCain Foods Canada is donating 300,000 meals to Second Harvest, the largest food rescue operation in Canada.

The announcement is part of the company’s commitment to help build thriving communities where it operates — a key pillar of McCain’s Global Sustainability Strategy. Building a partnership with Second Harvest will help ensure that perishable food from McCain feeds hungry families, and not landfills.

“McCain has ambitious community targets for Canada around food donation, volunteering hours and rural development projects – this partnership with Second Harvest will help us meet these targets, especially at a time when we know the need is strong,” says Danielle Barran, President, North America Potato Division & Canada. “We are committed to contributing to the competitiveness, resilience and long-term development of the rural communities where McCain operates, and Second Harvest is the perfect organization to help us do that.”

The announcement comes as part of McCain’s first-ever Sustainability Week, a celebration of planet-friendly initiatives and progress across the business. Building Thriving Communities is one of four key pillars in McCain’s annual Global Sustainability Report, along with Smart and Sustainable Farming, Resource-Efficient Operations and Good Food.

McCain’s Thriving Community targets in North America include:

·       Increase Food Donations — As a Second Harvest partner, McCain is committed to a donation of $125,000 CAD, equivalent to nearly 300,000 meals donated. In addition, McCain will continue to donate products and raw food to achieve a North American target of 17 million meals donated in the 2022 fiscal year.

·       Reduce Food Waste — Second Harvest will support McCain in achieving its zero waste to landfill objective, ensuring that both raw and finished product is enjoyed, and never thrown out.

·       Volunteer Opportunities — McCain is launching an exciting program called McCain Chips In, which allows employees from offices and plants to benefit from a paid day off to volunteer and support the communities where we operate. McCain is looking to achieve more than 4,000 hours of volunteering in fiscal 2022 in North America.

“Second Harvest has a network of foodbanks or other partners near all of our Canadian offices and plants, and they offer volunteering opportunities both in person and virtually,” says Audrey Leduc, McCain’s Senior Manager of Planet-Friendly Practices in North America. “This will be great for employee morale. It has been a rough year, and everybody is looking to do something good and help out. We will have a direct positive impact in the communities where we live, work and play.”

Second Harvest supports non-profit food programs all across Canada. Last year, it recovered more than 22.3 million pounds of nutritious, unsold food — focusing on protein, dairy and produce —before it became waste and redistributed to a broad network of 2,300 social service organizations.

“McCain’s in-kind donations of fresh, healthy food have already benefitted Canadians coast to coast,” says said Lori Nikkel, CEO of Second Harvest. “We are so grateful to have their financial support and the volunteer power of their staff for our food rescue operations across Canada, too. McCain’s company-wide commitment to keep food on plates and out of landfills is setting a benchmark for food businesses to follow.”

McCain and Second Harvest already enjoy a relationship, with McCain donating 1.76 million pounds of potatoes to Second Harvest in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020.

Learn more about McCain’s sustainability commitments as well as our journey towards regenerative agriculture in Together, Towards Planet-Friendly Food, 2020 Global Sustainability Report Summary at mccain.com.

For more information, please visit mccain.ca. Follow McCain on Twitter @mccainfoods and Instagram @mccaincanada and Like it on Facebook at /mccaincanada.

About McCain Foods (Canada)

McCain Foods (Canada) is the Canadian division of McCain Foods Limited, an international leader in the frozen food industry. McCain Foods is the world’s largest manufacturer of frozen potato specialties, and also produces other quality products such as appetizers, vegetables and desserts that can be found in restaurants and retail stores in more than 160 countries around the world. In Canada, the company has eight production facilities with approximately 2,400 employees and, in addition to its famous French fries and potato specialties, makes frozen desserts, snacks and appetizers.

About Second Harvest

Second Harvest is the largest food rescue organization in Canada and a global thought leader in food recovery. Working across the supply chain – from farm to retail – we capture surplus perishable food before it ends up in landfill negatively impacting our environment. The Second Harvest Food Rescue App connects businesses with surplus food to local non-profits, ensuring good food gets to people. With the global pandemic, Second Harvest is leading the Food Rescue Canadian Alliance (FRCA), bringing together government, industry, Indigenous communities and the non-profit sector to ensure food reaches the most vulnerable members of our communities, from coast to coast to coast. Learn more at https://secondharvest.ca/.  

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