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Story originally printed in the Winona Daily News or online at www.winonadailynews.com

Published - Friday, March 16, 2007

Support venison processing bill

By Carla Johnson

Rochester, Minn.

Channel One Food Bank & Food Shelf, the regional member of America’s Second Harvest located in Rochester, works with almost 100 hunger relief organizations in southeast Minnesota to ensure that people in need have access to supplemental food for their families.

By relying on donations of industry surplus food, the work of our distribution center provides almost 5 million pounds of food for the organizations that are our partners. The majority of food we distribute makes its way from industry donors to Channel One and then to food shelves in local communities who directly serve people in need of assistance.

I write to support the purpose of SF 399 (sponsored by Sen. Sharon Erickson Ropes, Winona, and co-sponsored by Sen. Dave Senjem, Rochester), a bill that provides for the processing of deer for donation by hunters to hunger charities.

Statewide, venison is an abundant, nutritious, low-fat source of protein. This meat is usually not donated to food banks and food shelves because of processing requirements and their costs.

Last year, our hunger relief network benefited from the generous donation by area hunters of 24 deer worth of chops, steaks and ground venison, which we distributed regionally. When you think about it, what’s not to like about a bill that supports a statewide program that could turn an estimated 5,000 deer into more than one million servings of venison?

We know there are differences of opinion among deer hunter groups about how to best fund this program. We hope that the Legislature will find a satisfactory means of providing the necessary funds to implement this program. Protein, particularly meat, is rarely donated in quantity. Based on similar programs in neighboring states, this program has the potential to provide a significant volume of donated fresh meat and help feed people in our local communities.

Johnson is the executive director for Channel One Food Bank & Food Shelf in Rochester.