Farm to Negotiation Table: Food Safety and Nutrition Programs in the 2023 Farm Bill

The 118th Congress will feature several notable conversations about food, from food safety and labeling to nutrition. The latter has been named as a priority for the Biden Administration, where conversations have taken place at the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health earlier this year.

Given the Republican majority in the House of Representatives and the Democratic majority in the Senate, the must-pass Farm Bill — which authorizes many programs like farm loans, disaster assistance, conservation programs and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) for five years — is expected to be one of the few areas of bipartisan cooperation. With both of the chambers having slim majorities, many experts are already noting that there will likely be various compromises and less hyper-partisan fervor surrounding the parties’ priorities in the bill.

One of the major parts of the Farm Bill is the nutrition programs, particularly the SNAP and TEFAP, which have composed about 75% of the previous Farm Bill’s spending. SNAP, which provides food assistance to millions of low-income residents, was expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic, and has remained a popular program. During the pandemic, Congress temporarily increased SNAP benefits (by nearly $114 billion) in two ways: raising all benefits by 15% and boosting every household to the maximum benefit for their household size. These programs were extremely popular and enjoyed bipartisan support throughout the early stages of the pandemic. More recently, at least 16 states have opted out of providing additional emergency allotments and the programs became a source for partisan disagreement.

In the reauthorized Farm Bill, Republicans are expected to seek some cuts to the program, such as in the proposed budget by the Republican Study Committee, which advocated for converting food stamps into a discretionary block grant, having stricter work requirements for SNAP recipients, and combining all child nutrition programs into a block grant. However, Republicans such as future House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson (R-PA) who hope to pass the bill on time in 2023 and Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), one of the Republicans most supportive of funding nutrition programs, could push back on these efforts. At the same time, Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), the Senate Agriculture Committee chairwoman, has remained firm that “we are not going to cut nutrition,” including SNAP. Another name to watch is Jim McGovern (D-MA), Co-Chair of the House Hunger Caucus, who has focused on ending hunger and was an advocate for the White House Conference earlier this year.

Various stakeholders have outlined priorities for these nutrition programs, largely centering around benefit and eligibility levels as well as food source and quality. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank, released a slate of recommendations in June 2022. These included ensuring that SNAP reaches more low-income people by ending the three-month time limit for unemployed individuals, and strengthening food security in Native communities and keeping pace with technological improvements in the distribution of benefits and allowing for online food purchases. They also discussed the potential to redesign the performance measurement system to increase effectiveness.

Similarly, the Food Research & Action Center’s priorities included the passage of the Closing the Meal Gap Act of 2021 (H.R. 4077/S. 2192), which would increase SNAP allotments to Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands. They also advocated for the Improving Access to Nutrition Act of 2021  (H.R. 1753), which ends SNAP time limits and repeals the three-month time limit as top priorities for the bill. The American Farm Bureau Federation, the largest farm group in the country, in the release of their priorities, included more transparency for milk checks and the streamlining of nutrition programs to get food to those who need it most as two of their top goals. Additional nutrition goals included the inclusion of a block grant program that would allow food access networks to directly purchase specialty crops from farmers, technical and monetary assistance to farmers to facilitate the programs, and provisions encouraging consumption of domestically produced products. Many industry associations, such as the American Soybean Association, have centered their publicly-released priorities around topics in the Farm Bill pertaining to their area of interest, rather than nutrition programs.

Food safety and food labeling are also important topics of discussion that have been present throughout the Biden Administration and in the Farm Bill. The Biden Administration has taken the lead on this — directing the FDA in October 2022 to craft a system for front-of-pack labels on food, and have suggested simplifying front-of-pack labels to a system including star ratings or traffic light images. The nutrition label itself was last updated in 2016, after over 20 years, and included modest modifications pertaining to calorie count and added sugars. In September, the FDA also announced plans to change the criteria that companies can use to label their food “healthy,” which was last updated in 1994. Currently, this is in the rulemaking process and is available for comment on the Federal Register until December 28.

The FDA has stated that “the current “healthy” definition [is] outdated [and that] the current definition permits manufacturers to use the claim “healthy” on some foods that, based on the most up-to-date nutrition science and Federal dietary guidance, contain levels of nutrients that would not help consumers maintain healthy dietary practices.” The new rule would require that foods labeled as healthy contain a certain meaningful part of food from at least one of the food groups or subgroups, such as fruits, vegetables and dairy. It also would require that they have limited amounts of saturated fat, sodium and added sugars. Throughout the last few years, various consumer protection groups have brought lawsuits against food companies, arguing that the term “healthy” is misleading, especially when some of these foods have certain added sugars, chemicals, fats, or other ingredients.

There have also been legislative attempts to change this. The Food Labeling Modernization Act, which had been introduced in 2015 and 2018, would include various provisions pertaining to transparency of food labeling and packaging. It would require the FDA to set uniform requirements for front-of-package labeling, including terms such as “natural” and “healthy,” require manufacturers to submit labeling information to FDA, and would require updates to serving sizes. It would require the disclosure of various allergens and gluten-containing grains, which would provide unprecedented transparency for those with medically prescribed gluten-free diets. There have also been additional food safety related discussions in the run up to the Farm Bill — and we expect more discussions to come.

While these efforts have been the main ones taken so far under the Biden administration, there are others that could gain traction in the coming months. These include greater authority exercised by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in enforcing advertising laws against businesses in all areas, such as the food, beverage, and dietary supplement industries.

Considering the outsize role that nutrition programs play in the Farm Bill’s funding, these issues will remain prevalent throughout conversations about the bill’s future, especially from an appropriations standpoint. SNAP and other nutrition programs not only provide direct impact on Americans, but will constitute a significant majority of its funding. As the Biden administration works with the new Congress that has razor-thin majorities, these topics will continue to remain pertinent, especially as we get closer to the September 30, 2023 deadline to pass the Farm Bill.