CHC works with allied organizations to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 2: end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.
CHC staff also cooperate with allied organizations to shape new policy initiatives. In 2008 and 2009, CHC cooperated with over 40 organizations to help write The Roadmap to End Global Hunger. This seminal vision document influenced the Obama Administration’s current strategy to end global hunger, the Feed the Future (FTF) initiative. The Roadmap was updated in 2012 and a Roadmap Policy Brief released in 2015.
Through Feed the Future, the Obama Administration is demonstrating strong U.S. leadership in confronting global hunger. FTF seeks to enable poor farmers to produce more food, increase household income, and improve the nutrition of their children in critical growth years.
CHC is working in coalition with partner organizations to support Feed the Future by:
CHC supports the Obama Administration’s goal of ending childhood hunger. CHC previously joined other national anti-hunger organizations in providing recommendations for a Roadmap to End Childhood Hunger. We are currently engaged in implementing those legislative and regulatory recommendations.
In 2015, CHC will focus on protecting and strengthening the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and on maintaining the 2010 School Lunch nutrition standards and expansion of the Summer Meals Program through the 2015 Child Nutrition Reauthorization (CNR).
Preserving SNAP’s Entitlement Status
The U.S. House passed an FY16 Budget Resolution that contained a block grant proposal for SNAP. This proposal would end the entitlement status for SNAP and cut benefits by $127 billion over a 10 year period. Currently, if applicants meet SNAP eligibility criteria, they are guaranteed (entitled) to programs benefits, but under this proposal, benefits would not expand to meet need. Rather, some eligible applicants would be denied benefits due to lack of funds. SNAP is the only federal nutrition program available to all low-income people and expansion of this program to all eligible individuals is a key strategy for achieving the goal of ending childhood hunger by 2015 as more than 50 % of current SNAP participants are children.
Preserving Food Choice in SNAP
In response to concerns regarding obesity, amendments have been proposed to recent legislation that would require the Secretary of Agriculture to develop a list of “good foods” and “bad foods.” SNAP participants would be denied the opportunity to purchase any food item on the “bad food” list using SNAP funds.
CHC opposes limiting food choice for SNAP participants. Anti-hunger advocates have worked hard to eliminate “stigma” in SNAP by making food purchases through electronic benefit transactions (EBT cards). Eliminating food choice would reinstitute stigma in SNAP. Additionally, USDA research indicates that the diets of SNAP participants are generally comparable to the diets of Americans of similar economic means, and that Americans of all income groups need to improve their diets1.
2010 Child Nutrition Reauthorization Implementation and 2015 Child Nutrition Reauthorization (CNR)
The Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010 reauthorized the major child nutrition programs and contained important improvements and expansions. CHC supports the requirements that school lunches provide more fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lower-fat dairy products and opposes any backsliding on these standards in the 2015 reauthorization. USDA reports that over 90 percent of schools are currently implementing the 2010 school lunch nutrition standards.
CHC strongly encourages USDA to find more financial support for the school breakfast program. Reauthorization contained new requirements for improving the nutritional quality of school breakfast, but provided no increased reimbursement for these meals.
CHC also supported the nationwide expansion of the after school supper program and the removal of barriers to participation to the Summer Meals Program and would like to see Summer Meals expanded further in the 2015 CNR.
1. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service, Office of Research, Nutrition and Analysis. (2008). Diet Quality of Americans by Food Stamp Participation Status: Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1999-2004. Report No. FSP-08-NH. Retrieved from www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/NHANES-FSP.pdf