Food Companies Get Smarter About Disaster Relief to Haiti -- Some of Them Anyway

(MoneyWatch)  DNA Energy Drinks, like the rest of the world, wants to help Haiti. So the company is teaming up with the National Scholastic Surfing Association to gather used clothing to send to the victims of Haiti's devastating Jan. 13 earthquake.

It's a nice thought, but it might do more harm than good. According to Laura Freschi of NYU's Development Research Institute, this kind of 'help' actually leads to an "avalanche of unneeded stuff that descends on a relief site and takes valuable time and money to sort through and throw away." It's better to give money, according to a very blunt blog post entitled 'Nobody wants your old shoes: How not to help in Haiti.'

We do know that food and water are genuinely needed in Haiti, but even with those, there can be problems. Without a distribution plan, products just clog ports and make more work for those on the ground -- and not all food and drink products are appropriate. A recent New York Times article provided an anecdote about microwave-less cyclone survivors in Bangladesh trying to make sense of French TV dinners.

Fortunately most companies have gotten smarter about disaster aid since the tsunami of 2004. Nestle is donating water to Haiti but having it distributed through the Red Cross and World Vision, who presumably have some idea about how to get it where it's needed. And Wal-Mart's donation of pre-packaged food kits were "at the request of the Red Cross."

Most companies are sending money rather than potentially troublesome product donations -- and not just money for disaster relief. General Mills, for example, gave $100,000 to the American Red Cross International Response Fund. But the company gave even more money -- $150,000 -- to CARE International for "long-term rebuilding efforts." This is great because right now aid agencies may be getting more for Haiti than they know what to do with, but once the crisis fades out of the media spotlight, there will still be a lot of work remaining.

Of course, some can't resist promoting their own agenda. The soy industry is rushing to get soy-based products to Haiti, while the Human Milk Banking Association had to retract a call for bottled breast milk.