Retailers participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program would have to increase the diversity of foods they sell under a proposal announced today by the Agriculture Department.
The proposed change would require retailers to up the variety of foods stocked in each staple food group from three to seven. Those four staple food groups are dairy, protein, grains, and fruits and vegetables.
“Retailers participating in SNAP need to sell real food, plain and simple. Right now, the bar for stocking food as a SNAP retailer is far too low,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a news release.
The change would increase the total number of staple foods available to consumers using SNAP from 12 to 28.
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The proposal “closes loopholes that allow certain snack foods to count as staple foods, emphasizing the importance of healthy, whole food,” the press release said, and “simplifies how foods are classified, making the standards easier for retailers to understand – and [the Food and Nutrition Service] to enforce.”
The release said that the proposed rule would aid program integrity.
“Low stocking requirements make SNAP more vulnerable to fraud and abuse, permitting retailers that aren’t genuinely in the business of selling food to cash in on taxpayer-funded benefits,” USDA said. “With nearly 266,000 retailers redeeming $96 billion in SNAP benefits per year, no amount of fraud will be tolerated.”
Margaret Hardin Mannion, director of government relations at the National Association of Convenience Stores, said in a statement, "NACS has long advocated for a 'variety' rulemaking that increases nutritious options for SNAP customers, while being workable and common sense for small-format retailers, like convenience stores, to implement. We share USDA’s goal of ensuring Americans have convenient access to nutritious food, and we are evaluating the proposal with our members to determine if it meets these objectives."
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