In a fractious election year, lawmakers are united on one issue — blocking USDA’s proposal for retailers to stock a greater variety of healthy foods if they want to be part of the $80 billion food stamp program. The Senate Appropriations Committee approved a provision to bar USDA from working on the regulation in the fiscal year opening on Oct. 1, echoing action by House appropriators a month ago.
“We are extremely disappointed that Congress has chosen to take a step backwards from providing struggling families access to healthy foods, rather than what could have been a step forward to help retailers better serve their customers,” said a USDA spokesperson. “USDA will continue to seek and review comments on this proposal, and we plan to take all input received into consideration before publishing a final rule later this year.”
The bills, and their prohibitions, are a long way from becoming final. The House and Senate need to hold floor votes on their bills and then reconcile differences between them. Last year, congressional leaders wrote an omnibus spending bill when the piece-by-piece appropriations process broke down.
Opposition to the food-stamp retailer rule was so widespread on the Senate panel that the rider against it, Section 752, was rolled into a seven-page, multi-part amendment that was approved by the committee on a voice vote with no dissent. The rider bars USDA from changing its definition of stores eligible to redeem food stamps or set a minimum number of stocking units for each food item that stores must offer.
The $147.7 billion USDA-FDA funding bill was approved, 30-0.
Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran, who chairs the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees USDA, said earlier this week that USDA’s Feb. 17 proposal might push small stores in rural America and in inner cities out of the food stamp program. “I would hope there would be more flexibility,” said Moran.
Under USDA’s proposal, retailers would have to stock a wider and deeper variety of healthy foods than in the past — a minimum of 168 items, specified as seven varieties of foods in the four staple-food groups plus perishable items in at least four of the groups, “with a depth of stock defined as six stocking units.” USDA says stores would have to stock an additional 54 items at an estimated cost of $140, a nominal amount. But some retailers say the cost of compliance runs into thousands of dollars a month.
The USDA spokesperson said no stores left the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program when stocking requirements were “enhanced” recently.
In the same multi-part amendment as Section 752, the committee approved a $5 million backstop to USDA calculation of payments under the Agriculture Risk Coverage subsidy. ARC payments are based in part on yields in a farmer’s home county but growers in the upper Midwest say the yield data is scanty in some areas and can result in unfairly low, or no, payments. Section 751, sponsored by Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota, creates a USDA pilot program that uses yields from comparable counties when local data is insufficient and allows larger payments to growers than initially indicated. Payments will be pro-rated so they do not exceed the $5 million earmark.
During their meeting, Appropriations Committee members approved language requiring “genetically engineered” or “GE” to appear “prior to the existing acceptable market name” for genetically modified salmon. It was the third year in a row that Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski won approval of the rider. Murkowski said FDA was wrong-headed to approve GE salmon for sale and “at a bare minimum, people should know it is genetically engineered salmon they are eating.”
Also, the committee approved language, on a voice vote, against horse slaughter in the United States. The House bill also would ban horse slaughter for human consumption. Its language was approved, 25-23.
To read a summary of the Senate bill and related documents or to listen to an audio of the Appropriations meeting, click here.