NATSO Comments on Proposed Rule on Updated Staple Food Stocking Standards for SNAP
NATSO on November 24 submitted comments on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service Proposed Rule on updated staple food stocking standards for retailers in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. NATSO supports the Administration’s goal of expanding healthy food options for individuals participating in SNAP. However, the Proposed Rule’s narrow grains and dairy categories will discourage tens of thousands of stores from participating in SNAP, dramatically reducing the number of stores where SNAP beneficiaries can purchase food. NATSO urged the agency to return to the language put forth in the proposed 2019 rule in the grains and dairy food categories.
Among its provisions, the Proposed Rule defines varieties of staple foods within the grains category in a way that departs from common understandings of what constitute different foods and restricts potential offerings in ways that are unworkable for smaller format food stores. For example, the Proposed Rule groups a wide variety of very different foods under the catch-all heading of “Breakfast Cereals/Foods” and declares that those foods all constitute a single staple food variety for purposes of compliance with the requirements for a retail food store in SNAP. These different foods, which would not count as different varieties under the Proposed Rule, include all grain-based breakfast cereals, many different combinations of sandwiches, frozen waffles, pancake mix, and other items that the Proposed Rule deems as being eaten at breakfast.
The Proposed Rule further restricts the number of staple foods that count in the dairy category, reducing the flexibility that was afforded in the 2019 proposed rule. For example, while the 2019 proposed rule treated full fat and reduced fat cow’s milk as separate staple food varieties, the Proposed Rule abolishes this distinction. The same is true for full fat and reduced fat yogurt and cheeses. The 2019 proposed rule gave retailers multiple workable pathways to meet the dairy requirement, but the new Proposed Rule strips away that flexibility and would make compliance challenging for small-format stores.
Read the complete comments here
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