Your Food

Help with Paying for Food ø Emergency Food

Find out about:

• Food stamps
• Special food supplements for pregnant women, nursing mothers, and infants
• Little-known other food programs
• Soup kitchens, Food Pantries and Emergency Food 
• The Maryland Department of Human Resources maintains an extensive list of emergency food providers by county.
• The Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington has a listing of emergency food sources and  soup kitchens in The District of Columbia and the nearby metropolitan counties.

Do you think you may have been wrongly denied help?

Try contacting:

• A legal services agency, such as the Legal Aid Bureau. Search this directory of providers of free help to persons with low or moderate income. You can also search for a private attorney to help you as well. Be sure to ask if s/he has experience in handling cases like yours.
• The Maryland Senior Legal Hotline, run by the Legal Aid Bureau, is a free telephone service for people in Maryland aged 60 years or older that will be able to offer telephone advice and/or referral t special legal services programs for elders.
• If you want to see the rules for the Food Stamp Program in Maryland, the agency that oversees the programs publishes the Food Stamp manual on its website. 

Do you want to file a complaint about tainted food, impure water or incorrect weights?

If you have a food-related health emergency, seek medical attention first!  

Otherwise, take the following steps:

1. Contact the store, restaurant, or person who supplied you with the food. Explain the problem and ask for what they can do for you or to protect others. Ask to speak to a manager and make sure that you document the name and title of the person to whom you spoke. Write down what happened.  The Maryland Attorney General has tips on ÒThe Art of Complaining Effectively.Ó 

If you are not satisfied, contact a government agency.

2. First contact a local agency, such as:

• The FDA Consumer Complaint Coordinator of Maryland at (410) 962-3593
• Your local health department.

3. You can also contact a federal agency through a couple of federal food safety hotlines:

• For seafood, call the Seafood Hotline at (800) 332-4010
• For meat, poultry and egg products, call the USDA free Hotline at (800) 535-4555

Things you will need for the USDA to investigate the problem with your food

• The original container or packaging.
• The foreign object found in food
• Any uneaten portion of the food

Gather this Information Before Calling the Hotline

• Your name, address and phone number
• The Brand name, Product name, and Manufacturer of the product.
• The size of the package type.
• The Can or package codes and dates.
• Establishment number (found in the circle or near the USDA passed & inspected phrase).
• The name and location of the store and date you purchased the product.

4. For food away from home (caterers, restaurants, community picnics) contact:

• Consumer Protection Division  

Office of the Attorney General  
200 St. Paul Place, 16^th Floor  
Baltimore, MD  21202  
(410) 528-8662

5. If you think you have a problem with your drinking water, contact

• Public Drinking Water Program

Maryland Dept. of the Environment
Point Breeze Building 40 
Room 8L  
2500 Broening Highway  
Baltimore, MD 21224  
410-631-3702  

• Environmental Protection Agency Region 3

841 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107  
(215) 597-9370  
Covers Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, District of Columbia The EPA also has an online ConsumerÕs Guide to the NationÕs Drinking Water which has information about home water safety, water purity, and keeping your water supply safe.

6. The Weights and Measures Section of the Maryland Department of Agriculture enforces laws and regulations about the labeling, weight, measure or count of such packaged items as food and household products. These offices also check the accuracy of weighing and measuring devices, for example, supermarket scales, gasoline pumps, taxicab meters and rental car odometers.

Maryland Department of Agriculture
Weights and Measures Section
50 Harry S. Truman Parkway
Annapolis, MD 21401
410-841-5790
Fax: 410-841-2765
 

General Information About Food Safety

If you are interested in obtaining information on general food safety tips, learning of news and safety alerts, or reporting a specific problem associated with your food such as, a food related illness, finding something in your food or becoming ill after eating in a restaurant contact the Gateway to Government Food Safety Information.  

Last legal review 9/21/01 (MLAN/shh-ac)

About this website. The Maryland State Law Library, a court-related agency of the Maryland Judiciary, sponsors this site. The website was developed (1999-2007) as part of an access to justice initiative by the Maryland Legal Assistance Network (MLAN) in collaboration with a number of legal services providers serving low and moderate income Marylanders.  In the absence of file-specific attribution or copyright, the Maryland State Law Library may hold the copyright to parts of this website. You are free to copy the information for your own use or for other non-commercial purposes with the following language “Source: Maryland's People’s Law Library – www.peoples-law.org. © Maryland State Law Library, 2007.”

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