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USDA Proposes Rule To Restrict SNAP Access

arbyreed via flickr
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https://www.flickr.com/photos/19779889@N00/28347664145
USDA has proposed changes to SNAP that would crack down on access to the food program. Agriculture professor Lindsey Haynes-Maslow explains how the proposed changes would impact citizens' health and the U.S. economy.

The Department of Agriculture has put forward new rules that would make it more difficult for some working-age adults to access SNAP food benefits. The suggested rule change comes after a failed effort by House lawmakers to tighten work requirements through the farm bill. Currently, states have flexibility to waive work requirements for some recipients depending on factors including the state’s unemployment rate. The new USDA rule would strip states of that general waiver option.

Host Frank Stasio speaks with Lindsey Haynes-Maslow, an assistant professor and extension specialist in the Department of Agricultural and Human Sciences at North Carolina State University, about what the changes would mean for citizens’ health and the economy. Haynes-Maslow is also principal investigator for “Steps to Health,” a SNAP-Education program based at NC State and funded by the USDA. She recently wrote a piece about the proposed rule change for the publication "The Conversation."
 

Laura Pellicer is a digital reporter with WUNC’s small but intrepid digital news team.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
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