The purpose of this memorandum is to address recent inquiries on the application of the geographic preference option in the procurement of unprocessed locally grown or raised agricultural products.
This letter is to follow-up on conversations the USDA Office of General Counsel had with your legal team in 2010, in which we requested that eBay post a notice regarding the illegality of selling SNAP benefits on its website and/or that SNAP benefits be added to its prohibited items list.
Following the Jan. 26, 2012, issuance of the final rule titled Nutrition Standards in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs, several questions have been raised regarding its effect on current contracts between school food authorities and food service management companies.
In this policy memorandum, we clarify that the SFA may, in some cases, include bids for procurement of end products in its solicitation for procurement of commercial food products from commercial distributors, rather than conduct two separate solicitations.
FNS staff is working on making improvements to the QC process. One of the major components of the improvements that we are working towards is the development of a paperless work environment for both state and federal QC staff.
It has come to our attention that there is confusion over the Quality Control application of the certification policy that allows state agencies to disallow deductions when the households fails to provide requested verification or fails to report an expense after being advised that failure to do so would result in the loss of a deduction.
In response to several requests and to assist state agencies and school food authorities in their compliance efforts, we are providing the following prototype contract language requiring the return of purchase incentives to SFAs.
This memorandum is intended to provide clarification of what is allowable, for contracts executed both prior to and after publication of the final rule.
The purpose of this memorandum is to highlight the key provisions of the final rule and emphasize the responsibilities state agencies have in ensuring compliance with these provisions and with contract enforcement and oversight.