• L-R: MSM Milling director Pete Mac Smith, Foodbank Australia CEO Brianna Casey, and Manildra flour mill manager John Brunner with the product of their donations.
    L-R: MSM Milling director Pete Mac Smith, Foodbank Australia CEO Brianna Casey, and Manildra flour mill manager John Brunner with the product of their donations.
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Foodbank is celebrating the milestone of having provided 40 million meals to people in need due to its partnerships with agribusinesses and processors.

Manildra has provided 1800 tonnes of flour for the manufacture of pasta since it joined forces with Rinoldi in 2004 as part of the country’s first Collaborative Supply Program.

MSM Milling has donated 15,000 litres of oil since it started collaborating with Simplot in 2009 to make and donate Leggo’s Napoletana Pasta Sauce.

Manildra also donates sugar from Sunshine Sugar for the pasta sauce.

Foodbank Australia CEO Brianna Casey said corporate sector support is essential to providing food for 644,000 people every month.

The 2016 Foodbank Hunger Report reveals that 43,000 people are still being turned away by charities every month due to lack of food.

Foodbank has also partnered with Aussie Farmers Direct to launch Project Rudolph, which encourages Australians to buy a Christmas meal box for a struggling family this Christmas.

For $45 they can give a Christmas dinner of roast meat, carrots, potatoes, pumpkin, and Christmas cake, and it is hoped over 1000 meal boxes will be delivered across Australia this year.

Availability of nutritious food to indigenous communities has also been the focus of several Australian health organisations.
 
A coalition comprised of the Australian Red Cross, Dietitians Association of Australia, Indigenous Allied Health Australia, National Heart Foundation of Australia, Public Health Association of Australia, and the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation released a blueprint for improving food security at Parliament House in Canberra this week.

Their blueprint calls for sustained action and leadership from all levels of government and nongovernment organisations towards food and nutrition security, based on approaches that work and have been developed with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
 
Latest figures show around one in four (23%) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people live in a household that, over a 12-month period, had run out of food and could not afford to buy more – a figure six times higher than non-Indigenous Australians.

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