While relief efforts for Haitian earthquake victims have barely scratching the surface, Fresh King Inc. is doing its part to make sure the needy in that devastated country continue to receive help.
The Homestead, FL-based specialty fruits and vegetables importer and grower is coordinating a food relief effort with the American Peanut Council and other partners both domestically and internationally to help feed the hungry.
According to Bill Schaefer, Fresh Kings vice president of marketing, three 40-foot sea containers were shipped out of the Port of Miami this week filled with a variety of supplies, with a focus on raw materials to make a peanut-based protein paste, a therapeutic food used to treat malnutrition.
Fresh King donated space in its facilities in Homestead for consolidation and staging of these products in coordination with the American Peanut Council, Alexandria, VA. Schaefer said Fresh King organized the effort with Stephanie (Johnson) Grunenfelder of the American Peanut Council, who formerly worked in marketing in the fresh produce industry.
In addition to the materials for the peanut paste, Fresh King received contributions of personal hygiene and tools to help aid the Haitians.
Alvaro Perpuly, general manager, said he has been in contact with mango growers that Fresh King works with in Haiti. We were really happy to hear from themthat they were alive, he noted, but they are devastated. Thousands of people are still living in the streets and are starving. Some of their friends are sleeping in boxes.
He added that We didnt know we were going to have such a great reaction from different industries who are donating the materials. Fresh King has received strong responses from numerous food companies throughout the East and Southeast.
What Fresh King has provided is huge, stressed Grunenfelder. Warehouse space in south Florida is at a premium, and it costs about $4,000 to stage a 40-foot container. Fresh King donated their refrigerated space and their services to consolidate three containers.
Grunenfelder explained that this most recent undertaking is part of an ongoing initiative of the commercial peanut industry, entitled Peanut Butter for the Hungry, to help malnourished children around the world. The initiative centers on the food product which Haitians named Medika Mamba, which has a literal translation from the native Creole language of peanut medicine.
Medika Mamba combines powdered milk, vegetable oil, sugar, vitamins and minerals, and peanut butter into a ready-to-use-therapeutic food. All of those raw materials were packaged in the Fresh King shipment to Haiti. The food product is soft and can be consumer easily by children from the age of six months without adding water, Grunenfelder explained. These foods can be used safely without refrigeration–and even in areas where hygiene conditions are not optimal.
Prior to the devastating earthquake, Haiti was already one of the most impoverished countries in the Western Hemisphere.
The destruction in Haiti is no longer covered extensively by the media, but the problems are as bador worsethan ever, Perpuly emphasized. One of our mango growers told me an example of 35 people living inside one individual, tiny house that is meant for only one family.
Finding food and water is a daily struggle for the Haitians, added Schaefer, Were doing what we can to help.
Source: Fresh King Inc.