Soup kitchens find meat in short supply

MISSOULA – People who get food at Montana soup kitchens and food banks may find meat hard to come by.

Little money remains for purchases through a government program called Emergency Food Assistance, which is used to supply soup kitchens and food banks statewide. Demand for food reached a new high and has largely consumed the $394,000 available this year, the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services said.

A number of food staples remain available, frozen chicken and canned salmon will be distributed this fall, and there will be turkeys and hams for the holiday season, said Forest Farris, an administrator for the state agency. But for the most part, meat has “blown out the door,” Farris said.

A truckload of commodity ground beef consists of 40,000 pounds and usually costs $50,000-$55,000, but the price has shot to $65,000, he said.

“We’re using a lot of rice and noodles,” said Julie Emnett, who works at Missoula’s Poverello Center, which operates a soup kitchen. The center uses about 2,500 pounds of meat monthly, most of it from the state-run federal commodity supply.

The Emergency Food Assistance Program, one of four U.S. Department of Agriculture commodity food programs run by Farris’ office, supplies 85 soup kitchens and charitable institutions plus 70 food banks statewide.

The food program receives federal “bonus items,” products bought to stabilize commodity markets. Farris noted U.S. asparagus farmers are facing stiff competition from foreign growers, so the commodity program is buying more asparagus to influence the market.

The program still has plenty of canned fruits and vegetables, peanut butter, grains and other products.

Since Farris contacted the Poverello Center a couple of weeks ago concerning the money crunch, Emnett has been in touch with meat lockers and processors and obtained 2,000 pounds of donated meat. Part of it was pork from hogs butchered for people who then failed to pick up the meat.

“People are very generous, and I’m very thankful,” Emnett said. “But that’s not a long-term solution.”

The Poverello kitchen served 8,859 meals in June and 9,352 in May. The first quarter of 2004 brought a 50 percent increase in meals served, compared to the first quarter of 2003.