I have been working as a banquet server at one of Halifax’s major hotels since last summer. The food which they serve is supremely healthy and scrumptiously variable: heaping slabs of smoked salmon, piles of clustered mussels and oysters in their characteristic sauces, sirloin tender steak seasoned in a delicate broth. Apart from the ordered meals per person, there are about three times as much “extra’s” just in case more people come. More people never come and there remains about 300 leftover meals daily in hot boxes for dinner ONLY, to be thrown in the garbage.

I have never witnessed so much waste in all my life. We, as employees, cannot even eat it because of “health” reasons. The hotel gives us this perfunctory answer about how they will be held responsible if any of us become “fatally sick” from food allergies, as if food allergy concern can only be avoided by paying customers.

There are programs (Meals on Wheels) who are ecstatic to pick up all the excessive, unused foods and transport it to all of the needed, deserved locations to be consumed. It is of pure laziness and ill-will to see that these pertinent resources are not being utilized.