Although key lawmakers in the House and Senate support an update of U.S. child nutrition programs, headlined by school lunch and WIC, the timeline for those updates is unclear. “If we can’t go forward, we’ll wait,” Sen. Debbie Stabenow, the senior Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, said on Thursday, in a reference to disputes over school food standards.
The government is forecast to spend $23 billion on child nutrition this fiscal year. Roughly 30 million students eat meals daily through the school lunch program. The Women, Infants, and Children program, or WIC, provides food packages monthly to 6.6 million pregnant women, new mothers, and children up to age 5.
Senate Agriculture chairman Pat Roberts has said he intends to take up child nutrition during the two-year congressional session that opened in January. Stabenow told reporters that she and Roberts are committed to passing a child nutrition bill. Work might begin this year, she said. The House Education and Labor Committee held its first hearing on nutrition reauthorization on Tuesday.
“We don’t want to go backwards,” said Stabenow at the National Food Policy conference, sponsored by the Consumer Federation of America. “Right now, we are listening” to suggestions for what should be part of a reauthorization.
Legislative action on child nutrition stalled in 2016, when conservative House Republicans wrote a reauthorization bill that included a three-state test of block grants for school food and restrictions on the Community Eligibility Provision, which allows schools in high-poverty neighborhoods to serve meals for free to all students. By contrast, the Senate Agriculture Committee approved a bill to expand the summer food program, more stringently enforce eligibility rules for free and reduced-price meals, and slow down rules on salt levels and whole grains in meals.
For its part, the Trump administration has given schools more flexibility on salt and whole grains, and restored chocolate milk to school cafeterias.
House Education chairman Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat, said child nutrition is one of several issues before his committee and parried a question about action on nutrition by asking if the questioner meant this year or this session, said The Hagstrom Report.
New funding is unlikely for a child nutrition bill. In that case, lawmakers would have to find offsets within current programs to pay for any new initiatives. Stabenow said she would like to strengthen the summer food program and after-school food aid.
The 2010 child nutrition law called for less salt, fat, and sugar in school food and more fruit, vegetables, and whole grains. Although the law nominally expired in 2015, the programs remain in operation.
Hannah Walker of the Food Marketing Institute, a trade group for grocers, said a nutrition bill could be a vehicle for streamlining WIC licensing rules. Currently retailers face fewer hurdles for approval to make SNAP sales, even though the USDA runs both programs. “Technology should make it easier to streamline,” Walker said during a panel discussion at the conference.