Europe
The first European food bank was founded in France during 1984. Similar to the UK, they have become much more common within continental Europe since the crisis that began in 2007, and especially since austerity began to take effect from late 2010. In Spain, demand for food has been such that some have resorted to extra-legal methods to acquire it; in August 2012 the "Robin Hood" mayor Sánchez Gordillo led raids where food was forcibly removed from supermarkets, and later given to food banks. The number of food banks has increased rapidly even in Germany, a country that has weathered the crisis relatively well, and has not needed to implement severe austerity. In 2012, professor Sabine Pfeiffer of Munich University of Applied Sciences said there has been an "explosion" of food bank usage.
Read more about this topic: Food Bank
Famous quotes containing the word europe:
“Of one thing I can assure you with comparative certainty, whoever wins, Europe will be economically ruined. This war is America’s great opportunity.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Television is an excellent system when one has nothing to lose, as is the case with a nomadic and rootless country like the United States, but in Europe the affect of television is that of a bulldozer which reduces culture to the lowest possible denominator.”
—Marc Fumaroli (b. 1932)
“It is not unkind to say, from the standpoint of scenery alone, that if many, and indeed most, of our American national parks were to be set down on the continent of Europe thousands of Americans would journey all the way across the ocean in order to see their beauties.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)