No holiday for US food banks

As the United States celebrates Thanksgiving - with traditional feasts of turkey and pumpkin pie - for some of the millions who live in poverty the cupboards are bare.

It's Saturday morning in Seattle, and it's been raining for hours - yet, even before the doors open, a line of people winds round the side of the building and out into the car park.

They are waiting to collect handouts at the North Helpline food bank in an affluent city in one of the world's wealthiest nations.

And some of them have experienced real hunger.

"We open the fridge, and here's nothing but a bottle of Ketchup," says Josh Freeman, who's 19.

"We try to figure out what would go good with Ketchup!" he laughs, somewhat grimly.

Pam Wilson, 36, has a similar story: "I've learned to eat a packet of soup a day, instead of the three or four meals I was eating before."

Hungry children

Statistics for the year 2000, compiled by the US Department of Agriculture, show that 10.5% of all US households - 33 million people - suffered from "food insecurity."

That is, they couldn't afford to buy enough food to meet their basic needs. Of those, more than eight million, including 2.7 million children, were classified as "hungry."

Washington State ranks second in the nation for hunger, behind neighbouring Oregon. One reason is obvious - it has one of the highest rates of unemployment, at 6.7 %.

Over the last six months, Rita Anderson, who runs the North Helpline food bank, has seen a 13% increase in the number of people needing help:

"We've had some donors, who were just wonderful, and then I found that two of them were stand in line - they're now clients.

"People are making choices between medicine and food, between heat and food, between paying their rent and food. Those are choices that people shouldn't have to make."

But a surprising number of food bank clients do have jobs.

Josh Freeman, he of the Ketchup, works full time as a warehouse manager. Just behind him in the food line stood Heidi - who didn't want to give her surname - who works full-time providing child care.

Both jobs pay about the minimum wage, $7 an hour.

And in Seattle, where the cost of living is sky-high, that's not enough to make ends meet.

Minimum wage

Says Heidi: "I've got to pay the rent, the lights, the car, and then food for the kids, as much as possible. Sometimes I have just $5 to my name to last two weeks."

During the 1990s, Washington State prospered. Thousands of people moved here, attracted by jobs at Boeing and the high-tech industries.

With so many people arriving, the real estate market boomed.

But not everyone benefited, as Linda Nageotte, the President of Food Lifeline - a major distributor of food aid in Seattle - explains:

"The folks who were at the top of the economic spectrum did really well. But those at the bottom end actually lost ground.

"These were folks who were working full time jobs, at rates higher than minimum-wage and they saw, over a five year period, their rents increase by 65%.

"But their wage increases certainly did not keep pace with that."

Food banks

So, some of the causes of hunger are obvious. People can't afford to buy food, either because they don't have a job, or because the job they do have doesn't pay enough to cover the bills.

However, it's more complicated than that.

Between them, the federal government and non-profit organisations - such as Food Lifeline and North Helpline - provide enough financial and material benefits to ensure no-one should go hungry.

But not everyone can get to a food bank. The poorest families don't have cars, and in rural areas, the nearest food bank can be some distance away.

The federal government offers food stamps and other benefits. But many fail to claim them because of language barriers, complex paperwork and the social stigma.

Thousands don't even realise they're eligible for help.

Obviously, hunger in the US is not on the same level as, for example, sub-Saharan Africa. It's more a low-level, debilitating malnutrition.

It makes children ill, and reduces their ability to concentrate in school. And as education is the key to a better job, and a better salary, this simply perpetuates an endless cycle of poverty.

As Linda Nageotte concludes: "People in the US cannot get past their disbelief, to begin to do something about hunger. Hunger's invisible in this country.

"It doesn't show up in the same way as it does in Third World countries, and if it doesn't show up, it's real easy to believe it doesn't exist."