Thread: Trump Administration Proposes ‘Blue Apron-Style’ Program to Deliver Food to SNAP Reci

Trump Administration Proposes ‘Blue Apron-Style’ Program to Deliver Food to SNAP Recipients

by KATHERINE RODRIGUEZ
13 Feb 2018594
The Trump administration proposed a plan that would deliver food items to food stamp recipients as part of their benefits package.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) noted that under the plan, which is included in the 2019 budget, those receiving more than $90 a month in benefits would receive “nutritious, U.S.-grown and produced food” in a “Harvest Box” that would make up half of a recipient’s allotted benefits for the month. The rest of the benefits would be placed on electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards for use at grocery stores as is allowed under the current SNAP system.

Budget Director Mick Mulvaney described the Trump administration’s “Harvest Box” proposal as a “Blue Apron-style program” where recipients receive food instead of cash vouchers.

The agency estimates that 16.4 million households enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) —about 81 percent of SNAP enrollees—would be affected by this policy.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in a statement:

USDA America’s Harvest Box is a bold, innovative approach to providing nutritious food to people who need assistance feeding themselves and their families — and all of it is homegrown by American farmers and producers. It maintains the same level of food value as SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] participants currently receive, provides states flexibility in administering the program, and is responsible to the taxpayers.

The USDA estimates that the proposal would save $129.2 billion over a period of ten years, would decrease food stamp fraud, and would enhance the nutrition content of the program.

Some food policy advocates questioned whether the Trump administration’s proposal would save the government money if the government were in charge of handling distribution, and expressed concern over how much choice SNAP recipients would have in what types of food they would receive.

“It’s a risky scheme that threatens families’ ability to put food on the table,” said Stacy Dean, vice president for food assistance policy at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

A spokesperson for the agency told Breitbart News that individual states would determine what food suppliers to use for the boxes, how the food is distributed, and would be able to “regulate specific contents of the boxes.” The USDA spokesperson did not specify, however, whether recipients would have any choice in what is placed in the boxes.

The “Harvest Box” idea is based on an existing program known as the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which utilizes local agencies and nonprofits to help distribute food boxes to “low-income elderly persons” who are at least 60-years-old. The program began under the Agriculture and Consumer Protection Act of 1973, which the Nixon administration authorized.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...ap-recipients/

Oh please, just stop spending money on afghanistan. Do not deliver GMO & pesticide ridden food or canned food lined with the deadly toxin BPA to anyone. Ask Rand Paul where to cut the spending if you want to schrimp trump. He is more aware than you on spending and nutrition. Think the 12 diet cokes a day are taking its toll on clarity.

And count on lawsuits with the food "delivered". Oh it was tainted, etc. Are you kidding me - where is reality here! Big rich trump has nothing better to do, no better deals to make than to package and deliver to snap recipients food that will be subject to contamination and lawsuits. This is w/o a doubt a stupid idea. And w/o a doubt several of his cronies are lining up to get the contract - just like his abominable, unfit choices for some of our most important positions; agriculture,
EPA, etc.

A study by the Environmental Working Group tested commonly eaten canned foods from grocery stores in three US cities, including Oakland. Out of 97 cans, 57 percent contained detectable and often high levels of BPA. Pastas, soups, and infant formula accounted for some of the highest levels. The group estimates that BPA exposure is unsafe in 10 percent of all canned food and a staggering one-third of infant formula.

First synthesized in 1891, bisphenol A is an artificial estrogen that is particularly useful in creating plastic polymers. It is used in a wide variety of products manufactured around the globe, including CDs, fax paper, car parts, adhesives, and bullet-proof laminates. It creates hard plastics, like #7 water and baby bottles, and is also used in epoxy can liners to reduce spoilage of the food inside. BPA has been detected in rivers, soil, and household dust-and is turning up increasingly in studies of human chemical loads. One study found BPA in 95 percent of 400 American adults. It has also been detected in the amniotic fluid surrounding human babies.

For many years now, exposure to BPA has been associated with cancer, insulin resistance, and birth defects. Tests beginning in the '30s showed that high doses are toxic to rodents. In 1997, it was discovered that low levels of BPA produced harmful effects in male mice exposed in the womb, enlarging the prostate and lowering sperm count. What was most unexpected-and alarming-was that low-dose experiments produced worse effects in the mice than high-dose. Since then, nearly a hundred studies have shown BPA to be toxic in low doses on animals, producing such effects as insulin resistance, damaged DNA, miscarriage, decreased testosterone levels, early puberty, and the production of breast cancer and prostate cancer precursor cells.

Other tests suggest that some people, due to specific genetic makeup, may have a harder time ridding BPA from their bodies, which could make them more susceptible to BPA's toxic effects. These effects are most dangerous to pregnant women, babies, and young children. For example, in one Japanese study, women who had frequent miscarriages were found to have higher levels of BPA in their bloodstream than women who could carry pregnancies to term. In general, the hormone-unbalancing effects of BPA are not diagnosable as BPA exposure; rather, they may show up as early onset of puberty, reduced fertility, type II diabetes, and an increased risk of cancer. The rise of cancer rates over the last few decades is correlated with the increased use of BPA in industry, although cause and effect is difficult to prove since BPA joins a long list of possible culprits.

https://www.organicconsumers.org/new...ood-can-liners

There is so much fraud within the food stamp, SNAP programs.

2 wrongs do not make a right

It does make it difficult to buy things other than food or use the card to gamble etc...All one has to do is search "welfare fraud" and they will find accounts of millions of dollars in fraud.
Here is and example from the archive.

14 Arrested In Raids Related to $16 Million Food Stamp Fraud

August 30, 2016 10:59 PM

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — More than a dozen retail store operators in and around Baltimore have been charged in connection to a huge food stamp and wire fraud scheme.

The indictments allege the retailers received more than $16 million in federal payments for transactions in which they did not provide any food, a fraud scheme commonly known as “food stampstamp trafficking.”

Retailers must apply to and be approved by the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service to participate in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as the Food Stamp Program, which helps low income families afford nutritious foods.

https://www.alipac.us/f19/14-arreste...-fraud-344115/

I agree with artist. No food boxes. What I would like to see is the federal government get out of the grocery business. The food program is run through the USDA, it's there to support spending on food to help agriculture sales, same as the free school lunch program. It's not there to assist the hungry. Just end the SNAP and Free School Lunch Programs and tell states and communities to feed their people at their expense. People in DC do not understand how poor people live. To cook food from boxes, one needs a stove and a refrigerator, one needs electricity to operate them, and many days a year, poor people have neither because their utilities are cut off or the frig is broken or the stove is gas and the gas is cut off. People in DC don't understand that you can't make deliveries of food and leave it on the doorsteps in poor neighborhoods, it will be stolen. People in DC also don't understand that fresh food in a box will be all the rotten stuff the sellers couldn't get the supermarkets to buy. People in DC don't understand about food allergies and likes and dislikes. How does a homeless person or homeless family eat their food box? How do you deliver it to them?

The disconnect of DC to poverty shows the best way to deal with poverty in the US is to eliminate it. Get our citizens jobs at wages they can live on and all the problems of at least 90% of our poverty goes away. Pass a 10 to 20 year moratorium on all immigration and deport every single illegal alien and you've gotten rid of the other 10%. Also, tell churches to stop fighting birth control and abortions, because the number one cause of poverty in the world including the United States is over-breeding and over-population, the same with any species.

Open Food Banks!

Why deliver it to their doorstep.

A little dose of "humility" will go a long way.

Are we going to send a Chef to open the food and cook the meals for them too?

This is out of control!