We are committed to upholding Secretary of Agriculture Rollins’ priority to take swift action to minimize instances of fraud, waste, and program abuse, and to ensure American taxpayer dollars are spent with integrity and accountability. We are issuing this memo, both in support of that priority and in response to requests from SNAP state agencies and FDPIR administering agencies, for additional guidance on preventing dual participation and ensuring comparable disqualifications are applied in SNAP and FDPIR.
This memorandum provides notice to child nutrition program operators regarding the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025 (the 2025 Appropriations Act), March 15, 2025. This applies to state agencies administering, and local organizations operating, the USDA FNS child nutrition programs.
The purpose of this memorandum is to provide guidance to state agencies and school food authorities on the paid lunch equity requirements for school year 2025-26.
We periodically examine how SNAP households use their monthly EBT benefits, including number of purchase transactions per month, average purchase amount, types of retailers frequented, and rate at which households exhaust their benefits over the month. This study, the fourth in the series, was done to assess monthly EBT redemption patterns during FY 2022 when SNAP EBT benefits were much larger than usual due to pandemic funding. By FY 2022, SNAP households could also use SNAP EBT to purchase groceries from authorized online retailers, so we analyzed benefits redeemed through online purchasing.
We periodically examine SNAP benefit redemption patterns related to the timing, number, and dollar amount of transactions and the rate at which households spend down and exhaust their monthly benefits. These studies also report on the number of transactions made and the share of benefits redeemed at various types of stores.
We are ensuring programs work harder to encourage healthy eating and lifestyle habits, including through the SNAP Food Restriction Waivers.
This rule rescinds an obsolete data collection requirement in regulations regarding the Child and Adult Care Food Program.
On March 20, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14243, Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos. Among myriad important directives, this Executive Order required agency heads to “take all necessary steps, to the maximum extent consistent with law, to ensure the Federal Government has unfettered access to comprehensive data from all state programs that receive federal funding, including, as appropriate, data generated by those programs but maintained in third-party databases.”