ARLINGTON, Va. (Dec. XX, 2017) – Today, the National Grocers Association’s (NGA) senior vice president of government relations and public affairs, Greg Ferrara, issued the following statement after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) approved an unprecedented waiver allowing the State of Maine to place restrictions on food purchases for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) customers:

“America’s independent supermarket operators have long partnered with the USDA, Congress, and industry partners to improve efficiency and effectiveness in the SNAP program, but today’s decision creates a slippery slope that threatens to undermine the basic intent of SNAP. Maine’s attempt to play food police, despite SNAP customers having nearly identical diets to the rest of America, would only expand the administrative burdens for independent supermarkets.

“Trying to decide which foods are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ would be nearly impossible and lead to a food code more complicated than the tax code. It would require identifying, evaluating, and tracking the more than 650,000 foods available in the market today, and updating point of sale systems constantly with over 20,000 food products introduced each year. This would likely cost taxpayers much more than it saves.

“Supermarkets are helping both SNAP and non-SNAP customers make healthier food choices alike. For example, many stores participate in Double Up Food Bucks, a program that provides SNAP recipients with a one-to-one match to buy fruits and vegetables. The industry has also increasingly provided in-store dietitians and nutritional signage to help shoppers make informed decisions, and NGA has long supported these efforts.

“But worst of all, these restrictions also pave the way for varying state laws to undo the interoperability that grocers, states, and the USDA worked so hard to create. This proved to be important during the recent natural disasters, allowing SNAP customers who evacuated to take their benefits with them since all states operate under the same guidelines. Today’s decision effectively destroys that system by adding new challenges in the program when many recipients need SNAP the most.”

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