The biggest impediment to donating foodstuffs by grocery stores is most often governmental food safety regulations. A store just can’t take foods it needs to pull off the self and donate it. It can be onerous to get the special permission to do things like this. And yes, management is too lazy to jump through all the hoops and put out the effort to try as it often stands.
I highly recommend working with your local government to make it easier for a grocery store to donate foods.
You don’t remember much from what you read about Spam did you.
Spam was developed for the US Army during WW2 as a CHEAP way to get a lot of calories to soldiers at the front lines. It’s never been considered fancier than ham because Spam gets made from off cuts , scraps, and cheap cuts of the pig. It’s merely a cured unsmoked fatty pork paste with some spices added and then poured into a sealed can and pressure cooked.
The preservative you are so worried about is simply nitrated salt, commonly called Pink salt because it’s dyed pink to give you a fast visual warning that this ain’t table salt and should NOT be used for that EVER. Your local butcher shop will probably sell you some, (they might even just give you the couple of tablespoons you would need to cure the 5lbs of pork you just bought from them). Or you can just as easily order a pound of Pink salt from amazon like I do. Warning: a pound of it is a lot of curing salt, but I make 20lbs or more of bacon every year at home.
After you have the meat, all you need do is make you brine, (water, spices of your choice, and a table spoon or two of the Pink salt - how much depends on the size of your batch), and the patience to wait 4 or 5 days it takes for the magic happen. Then if you don’t want to pressure cook it while canning, you can slow cook your pork in the oven, then grind it into a fine paste adding whatever seasonings and spices you choose for more flavor, put it in freezer bags, (I use vacuum sealed bags), and freeze. You now have your own home made Spam…It’s not hard to do, just a bit time consuming while you wait.
Is it better than commercially made Spam? Most probably because you can make it taste the way YOU like it. And not how Hormel thinks it should taste. Recipes are just a goggle away and simple as all get out.
I always have told my wife, (who has what I think is a phone call and texting addiction), that there are only 2 reasons to call me at work:
You’ve been in an accident. That happened one time in 40 years. And yes, I left work immediately and went to find them. Thankfully, no one was injured.
You or the kids have been hospitalized. That never happened.
And no, the death of someone was not a reason to call. I can’t do anything for them now. So the news can wait.