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How’s this for bad, but not unexpected, news: household food insecurity is up again. 

It’s especially up among households with children.

And it’s the worst in years.

Food insecurity declined during the pandemic because the USDA increased benefits and waived some restrictions to enable easier access.

Guess what: if you make sure people have the resources they need, their food insecurity declines.

If you reduce benefits, as Congress did when it declined to continue the pandemic benefits, food insecurity increases—and sharply, given what inflation is doing to food prices.

How’s this for evidence for the clear effects of good public policy followed by bad.

The remedy here is simple: restore the pandemc benefits.

The USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service sent out one of the saddest emailed notices I have ever received, announcing the end of relief measures enacted during the COVID-19 emergency.

The FNS says it is working closely with participants, States, retailers, other federal agencies, and the White House to help with the transition.

This will not be easy.  The COVID-induced increases in benefits did much to reduce family and child poverty as well as food insecurity.

What follows is slightly edited, mainly to reduce repetitive statements.

End of the National COVID-19 Public Health Emergency – Impact on FNS Programs. 

The national public health emergency (PHE) put in place at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to expire on May 11, 2023. The end of the public health emergency…will trigger changes that impact low-income individuals and families.

• SNAP Emergency Allotments: The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023, required that pandemic-related SNAP Emergency Allotments (EA) be terminated after the issuance of February 2023 benefits.  See: The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
• SNAP ABAWD Time Limit: Beginning July 1, 2023, able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs) participating in SNAP will once again be required to meet the ABAWD work requirements or could risk losing benefits as soon as October 2023.
• Temporary Student Exemptions:  Beginning July 1, 2023, the temporary student exemptions – which allowed college students who wouldn’t typically be eligible for SNAP to receive benefits during the public health emergency – will begin to be phased out, impacting students as they are due for recertification.
• SNAP Administrative Adjustments and Waivers:  FNS is working very closely with States to help them successfully transition back to normal operations, including offering four certification-related waivers specifically designed to support the transition to post-pandemic program operations.
• Child Nutrition Programs: FNS offered States and child nutrition program operators extensive flexibilities during COVID to ensure they could continue to serve kids the nutrition they needed. Two of the flexibilities currently offered – CACFP benefits for young adults in shelters and offsite monitoring – are tied to the PHE and, therefore, will be coming to an end. See: Child Nutrition Programs
• Pandemic EBT: Since March 2020, Pandemic EBT, also known as P-EBT, has been helping eligible families cover food costs for kids who typically received free and reduced-priced school meals or were eligible through their child care facilities. These benefits will continue through the end of summer 2023 for school children, but will end when the PHE ends on May 11, 2023, for children in child care. The new nationwide Summer EBT program recently passed into law will be available starting in summer 2024, and will help families in need continue to put food on the table during the summer when children aren’t receiving meals in schools. See: Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer (P-EBT)  
• WIC: After the end of the public health emergency, most of the flexibilities FNS provided to WIC participants during the pandemic will continue to be available under a separate authority Congress provided FNS in the American Rescue Plan Act. With this authority, WIC state agencies can continue to offer – and build and improve upon – remote services after the PHE ends. Infant formula waivers, which are not tied to the PHE, will be phased out on a different timeline through the end of June 2023.  See:  Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)

Additional information is available on the FNS website, here.

Comment: I consider this a national tragedy, and a huge mistake.  If COVID-19 proved anything, it was that these measures were highly effective in reducing child poverty in the United States.  Now what.  We go back to higher levels?  As I said, a national tragedy.

Congress will have much to answer for when the results of this shameful decision become to be apparent.

I was interested to come across this paper: Conflict of Interests in the Scientific Production on Vitamin D and COVID-19: A Scoping Review.   Front Public Health. 2022 Jul 11;10:821740.   doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.821740. eCollection 2022.

Results and conclusions: 

• Studies were funded by companies in the diagnostics, pharmaceutical and food sectors.
• Conclusions favorable to vitamin D supplementation were more prevalent in papers where COI was identified (9/13, 69.2%) than among papers where COI was not found (4/16, 25.0%).
• Omissions of disclosure of COI, funding source, and sponsor functions were observed.
• The identification of possible corporate political activities in scientific papers about vitamin D published during the COVID-19 pandemic signals a need for greater transparency and guideline development on the prevention of COI in scientific production.

Comment:  Not many studies look at disclosure issues this closely.  This is a welcome addition to the genre.  It reminds me of this especially entertaining report: “COVID-19 and misinformation: how an infodemic fuelled the prominence of vitamin D.”  Papers on vitamin D and COVID-19, it seems, are not only influenced by corporate interests; they are also occasionally fraudulent, if viral.

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I’m getting caught up on reports this week.  Here’s one from the US Agency for International Development:  COVID-19 and Nutrition Analytical Framework

The purpose of the Framework:

• Allow policymakers and implementers to better track the interaction of the COVID-19 pandemic and nutrition
• Provide a tool for planning policies, programs, and interventions
• Help identify data gaps
• Support a systems approach to addressing problems “caused, increased, or intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic”

The Framework:

What I like about this Framework is how it so clearly identifies the upstream system levels of intervention: food, health, social, education, and infrastructure.

It’s also interactive, but for that you have to go to its source and click on each section.

Here’s a report from a House Subcommitteethe on the behavior of the meat packing industry during the Trump Administration.

The key findings:

• The Meatpacking Industry Had Notice of the Acute Risks the Coronavirus Posed to Workers in Meatpacking Plants.
  Meatpacking Companies’ Claims of an Impending Protein Shortage Were Flimsy if Not Outright False.
• Meatpacking Companies Successfully Enlisted Trump USDA Political Appointees to Advocate Against Health Protections for Workers, While Sidelining Career Staff.
• Meatpacking Companies Worked with Trump’s USDA to Force Meatpacking Workers to Stay on the Job Despite Unsafe Conditions.
• Meatpacking Companies Worked with USDA and the White House in an Attempt to Prevent State and Local Health Departments from Regulating Coronavirus Precautions in
  Plants.
• Meatpacking Companies Successfully Lobbied USDA and the White House to Issue an Executive Order Purporting to Insulate Them from State and Local Coronavirus
  Regulations and Liability for Worker Infections and Deaths.

And just to remind you what was at stake, from Leah Douglas’s reporting for the Food and Environment Reporting Network:

Here’s Leah Douglas’s analysis of this report in Reuters, where she now works.

In the meantime, the meat packers deny all of this.

At the end of April, the House Agriculture Committee held hearings on the effects of consolidation in the meat industry.  These were the result of complaints by ranchers that they have been squeezed out by meatpackers and are being forced to sell their animals at prices below their costs.

I’ve written previously about President Biden’s executive order on the meat industry, and about his concerns about lack of competition in that industry.

The hearings followed up on those themes: The CEOs of the four major meat packing companies testified in defense of their practices, and denied colluding on prices.

Should we believe them?

Why does this remind me of the cigarette CEOs denying that their products cause cancer?

If you want more details, here are the links (thanks to Jerry Hagstrom for collecting these at The Hagstrom Report on April 27).  His report is at this link.

• House Agriculture Committee hearing – An examination of price discrepancies, transparency, and alleged unfair practices in cattle markets (video)
• Coy Young, cow/calf producer, Blythedale, Mo.
• Gilles Stockton, cow/calf producer, Grass Range, Mont., on behalf of National Plains Research Council and Western Organization of Research Councils
• Don Schiefelbein, cattle producer and president of National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Kimball, Minn.
• David MacLennan, CEO, Cargill Inc., Wayzata, Minn.
• Tim Schellpeper, CEO, JBS USA Holdings Inc., Greeley, Colo.
• Tim Klein, CEO, National Beef Packing Co. LLC, Kansas City, Mo.
• Donnie King, CEO, Tyson Foods, Springdale, Ark.

The USDA has produced three reports on the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on consumers.

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic led to significant changes in U.S. consumers’ food-spending patterns in early 2020, with a return to pre-pandemic spending patterns that continued through 2021.

While closures of restaurants and nonessential businesses contributed to record unemployment increases during March and April 2020, unemployment fell to below pre-pandemic levels by December 2021.

Although income and employment have improved, some U.S. households continue to face difficulties obtaining adequate food, particularly in the face of increasing food prices.

It has produced data and charts in three areas.

• Food Spending During the Pandemic: 
• Food Prices During the Pandemic
• Food Sufficiency During the Pandemic: The Household Pulse Survey

Here’s one of the charts, this one on prices.

This is the kind of thing the USDA’s Economic Research Service is supposed to be doing.  I’m glad they are back on the job.

Take a look at this.

The authors write:

It is clear that many (especially young) people no longer want to accept the profit-driven damage caused by the meat industry and are increasingly interested in and committed to climate, sustainability, animal welfare and food sovereignty causes. We consider this an encouraging step for our future and want to use this Atlas to strengthen their commitment with information.

This Atlas is intended to support all those who seek climate justice and food sovereignty, and who want to protect nature. Revealing new data and facts, and providing links between various key issues, it is a crucial contribution to the work done by many to shed light on the problems arising from industrial meat production.

They aren’t kidding about data, facts, and issues.  The graphics alone are worth viewing.  Three examples.

Pesticide applications, global:

Diseases transmitted by animals to humans: A chronological list

Trends and investment in plant-based meat alternatives

And here’s what The Guardian highlights: meat and dairy firms emit more greenhouse gases than Germany, Britain, or France.

I am indebted to Food Safety News for this item: FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN) has issued a statement:  COVID-19 is not a food safety issue (see my previous posts on this).

• Food does not spread the virus.
• Food packaging does not spread the virus.

Highlights of the FAO’s conclusions:

• Coronaviruses cannot multiply in food or on inanimate surfaces; they can only multiply in humans and certain animals. Once in the environment, viruses degrade and becomes less infectious.
• It is important to note that, although the detection of virus or viral ribonucleic acid (RNA) remnants on foods and food packaging provides evidence of previous contamination and is not disputed, there is no confirmation of SARS-CoV-2, or any other respiratory illness-causing virus, being transmitted by food or food packaging and causing illnesses in people who touch the contaminated food products or packaging.
• The virus responsible for COVID-19 is susceptible to most commonly used disinfectants and sanitizing agents used in the food processing environment. Standard cleaning and sanitizing procedures…should therefore be effective at disinfecting the food processing environment.

Well, at least that, and what a relief.

That still leaves us with these preventive measures: vaccinate, mask up, and avoid unmasked crowds.