Not BS. I used to work at a MLB stadium and we would donate all the left over cooked food to local homeless shelters and food banks. They were threatened with a lawsuit over a case of food poisoning even though there was not any hard proof. So their response was to no longer repurpose the food (I'm talking thousands of pounds of perfectly good cooked foods and produce per home stand) and give it to a pig farm. Also the labor to separate the food from the trash and the storage is a full time nightmare of a job that costs the business to implement. They are just CYA.
Depending if your municipality has a recycling program for homes and businesses there is plenty out there for the diving. I volunteered at a food bank and would take home fruits and vegetables that were past due for my chickens and geese all the time. We had pig bins behind the store and sometimes I would go "shopping" for their favorite treats.
