Images of food aisles at Walmart blocked off with caution tape spark outrage online: 'They seem to do this often'

A Connecticut Walmart left shoppers shaking their heads after a refrigeration failure forced the store to dispose of an entire section of frozen and refrigerated food.

What's happening?

Connecticut resident Jason Lamb took to Facebook to share what he witnessed at a Walmart in Waterford. His video showed caution tape blocking off freezer doors and tarps covering refrigerated meat cases.

"Does anyone know what this procedure is all about?" Lamb wrote. "There was caution tape running through all freezer doors and tarps covering over each and every refrigerator with meat products."

Commenters quickly pieced together what had happened.

"They lost power! Everything goes into the dumpster," one person wrote. "They seem to do this often, last time was an issue with their coolers so that's my assumption," another speculated.

Another confirmed the scope of the problem, writing: "I asked someone that works there, she said in the back [something] somehow shut off all the coolers and freezers in the front of the store and in the back of the store."

A third commenter summed up the frustration many were feeling: "The store has to throw all the food out they lost power to the refrigerator system it's crazy."

Why is food waste concerning?

When grocery stores trash large quantities of edible food, it strains our food system and fills up landfills. Food that decomposes in landfills releases methane, a heat-trapping gas that warms the planet faster than carbon dioxide.

With 1 in 7 Americans struggling to put food on the table, watching pallets of perfectly edible meat and frozen goods head to the dumpster seems especially wasteful.

Is Walmart doing anything about this?

In 2005, Walmart set a goal to achieve zero waste in its operations. Walmart has also partnered with Feeding America to donate surplus food, and the company says it donated over 760 million pounds of food globally in 2023.

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As incidents like this one demonstrate, store-level responses aren't always consistent. Equipment failures happen, and food safety regulations require stores to dispose of items that have been held at unsafe temperatures.

The question many shoppers are asking is whether more could have been done before the food spoiled.

What's being done about food waste more broadly?

The Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act protects retailers from liability when they donate food in good faith, removing one common excuse for not donating.

Apps like Too Good To Go and Misfits Market connect shoppers with surplus and disfigured food from grocery stores and restaurants at discounted prices.

You can make a difference by asking local grocery stores about their donation policies and supporting retailers with strong food recovery programs.

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