According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, Americans wasted up to 40% of their food in 2012 (Gunders 2012). By comparison, the EPA and USDA jointly submitted a paper in 1997 reporting that 27% of American food was wasted, or approximately 96 billion pounds of food (Haley 2013). Using the latter ratio, this means that 40% of the food wasted by Americans translates to 142.2 billion tons of food per year. If the average person eats 1,996 pounds of food per year (Aubrey 2011), that means the amount of food thrown away could have fed nearly 71,142,285 people. While not all of the food was necessarily edible, the numbers still lead to the sad conclusion that Americans waste an excessive amount of food. The irony becomes almost painful with the realization that hunger is such a critical issue in the United States. The Bill Emerson Food Donation Act was designed to protect businesses and individuals from civil liability if donated food causes harm. However, this protection is subject to the condition that the food is apparently healthy and that donations are made in good faith. The Bill Emerson Food Donation Act would have a significant impact on hunger in America if the public was more informed about the law and pushed companies to act accordingly. It is irreconcilable that the United States can waste so much food when so many people are going hungry. According to James Haley of the University of Arkansas, hunger in general has become a more serious problem over the past decade, as the national food insecurity rate has reached 14.7%. The USDA, meanwhile, has taken a surveyor's approach to addressing the hunger problem. In 2006, the USDA introduced new language that moved away from the...... middle of paper...... University of Arkansas School of Law RSS.Women's Giving Circle, University of Arkansas, August 8, 2013. Web. March 16, 2014.Gunders, Dana. Wasted: How America is losing up to 40% of its food from farm to table to landfill. Issue note no. 06-12-BNp: National Resources Defense Council, 2012. NRDC Issue Paper. National Resource Defense Council, August 2012. Web. March 15, 2014. Reducing Food Waste for Business, US Envtl. prot. Agency. Network. March 27, 2014. Staff, NPR. “Former Trader Joe's President Will Turn Expired Food Into Cheap Meals.” NPR. NPR, September 21, 2013. Web. April 8, 2014. United States. Cong. Economic and Educational Opportunity Committee. Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act: Report (to accompany H.R. 2428) (including Congressional Budget Office cost estimate). 104th Congregation Cong 104-210. Washington, DC: USGPO, 1996. Web.