What is food insecurity?

Although Australia is a wealthy country that produces vast amounts of food, significant parts of our community are affected by food insecurity. What's food insecurity? Food insecurity is about a lack of access by people to nutritionally adequate and safe food.
According to the World Health Organisation there are three key components:
1. Food access: the capacity to acquire and consume a nutritious diet. 
2. Food availability: the supply of food within a community affecting food security of individuals, households or an entire population.
3. Food use: the appropriate use of food based on knowledge of basic nutrition and care.
Food insecurity can range from to anxiety about access to extreme hunger because meals are missed or inadequate. And just as levels of food security can vary, people can shift in and out of levels of insecurity. It may be due to homelessness, unemployment, lack of mobility and access, or low income working families trying to meet regular or unexpected financial demands. Often the solution is to miss meals or be forced into low nutrition alternatives. The impact is hunger, social isolation, impacted performance at school, and poor physical and mental health, including obesity.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2002), almost 60,000 Australians in low-income working families go without meals or are food insecure.This includes around a quarter of Indigenous people, unemployed people, and single-parent households. 
There are lots of ways we can address this as a community. Food Rescue's goal is to address food insecurity by alleviating hunger through rescuing fresh nutritious food for people in need.

What we've achieved so far - logistics

It’s been a busy fifteen months getting Food Rescue started but the achievements to date have been outstanding.

Thanks to the help of Lotterywest in obtaining our premises, we now have an office and a warehouse. Kerry Chong Design, David Reid Painters, Polyflor, Doman Interiors, Zenith Furniture, World Wide Upholstery, WASP signage and Chair Solutions have all been invaluable in changing an industrial unit into a bright, modern workspace for staff and volunteers.

As it’s essential for our work to be able to pick up fresh food on-site and deliver it quickly and safely, chilled vans are a must. Ausdrill, GR Engineering and Argonaut Securities have donated three new refrigerated Mercedes vans including maintenance and costs to operate and fuel over the coming four years. Getting in and around of the city is tricky at the best of times so we’re also looking forward to our cargo bikes for pickups from CBD businesses.


We’re also just about to have a cool room installed at our premises. The new cool room, generously sponsored by the Clayton Utz Foundation, will help store an oversupply of fresh produce and food rescued from market days before being repackaged and distributed. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to store fresh and perishable foods and it would go to waste. We have 75 amazing volunteers registered with Food Rescue, mainly all assisting with our market days and actual food rescue activity throughout the week. We’ve been overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of people to get on board and help Food Rescue.


This is just part of the support Food Rescue has received and help us on our way to helping those in need by rescuing fresh, nutritious food.

Meet Food Rescue

Food Ambassdors (l-r) Vince Garreffa, Neal Jackson, David Coomer, Don Hancey [Russell Blaikie not pictured]

It is staggering to think that in a state as prosperous and thriving as Western Australia over 430,000 people currently live below the poverty line, with many struggling to eat one decent meal per day. Equally shocking is that each year Australians waste close to 3 millions tons of food, or 136 kilos per person.
Food Rescue is the first charity in Western Australia that works toward meeting the needs of the disadvantaged with the added benefit of keeping quality, perishable foods out of landfills. In essence, Food Rescue is the critical link between tons of fresh, nutritious food thrown away each year by the food industry and thousands of hungry people in need. We rescue fresh, perishable food from restaurants, caterers, hotels, food wholesalers and others in the food industry and deliver it to a network of charities and agencies that service the disadvantaged and people at risk throughout the community. Food Rescue provides this service at no cost to donors or recipients.
We believe that good food should not go to waste, and our team of dedicated staff and volunteers are passionate about making a positive difference to the thousands of lives we help. Our core values are respect, integrity and compassion for all humanity and the environment.
In its first year of operation, Food Rescue aims to rescue 30,000 meals per month via a cooperative effort between the food industry and our army of tireless volunteers who pick up and deliver fresh food. This worthwhile cause has already been recognized by a range of generous corporate, philanthropic and government donors who support our mission including Lottery West, the McCusker Charitable Foundation, the Australian Children’s Trust (Andrew Forrest), Ausdrill, Argonaut Ltd, GR Engineering, Australian Reliance and Clayton Utz.