Happy Friday, and welcome to Food Fix. I’m currently in Washington, Pa., helping my mom recover from knee surgery. There’s snow on the ground!
Don’t miss out: Friendly reminder that if you don’t get this newsletter twice a week you are missing out! On Tuesdays, I cover even more topics. If you work in the food space, it’s worth upgrading. This week, paid subscribers were the first to get all the relevant documents in the San Francisco lawsuit against Big Food. Go look at our subscription options.
New pod alert: We just released a new episode of Forked this week — Theodore Ross and I did a collab with Jerusha Klemperer who hosts the podcast What You’re Eating. It’s a great listen if you’re trying to get up to speed on MAHA and where things stand.
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Alright, let’s get to it –
Helena
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USDA threatens states (not SNAP benefits) in fight over recipient data
It’s only been a few weeks since Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients got a break from the wild rollercoaster of news (and downright stress) about their benefits during the lengthy government shutdown.
Now the program is back in the news, and we’re once again trying to make sense of the chaos.
What happened: During a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said USDA was planning to crack down on a long list of Democratic states that are refusing to hand over sensitive data about SNAP participants to the feds.
In February, USDA asked all states to turn over a trove of data about their SNAP recipients, including information like social security numbers and addresses, etc. as part of an initiative to crack down on fraud (like applying for benefits in multiple states). Many states agreed to turn over data, but 21 Democratic states — including large states like California and New York — plus D.C. have refused and are fighting the request in court, fearing that the information may be used to aid immigration enforcement.
(To be clear: Undocumented immigrants do not qualify for SNAP. However, if their household includes children who are U.S. citizens, they can apply for grocery benefits on their behalf.)
A judge in October temporarily halted USDA’s data request on behalf of the Democratic states. Litigation is ongoing, but Rollins ratcheted up the pressure on states this week:
“As of next week, we have begun and will begin to stop moving federal funds into those states until they comply and they tell us and allow us to partner with them to root out this fraud and protect the American taxpayer,” Rollins said Tuesday.
Furor and chaos: This led many to speculate that Rollins was essentially threatening to pull back SNAP benefits from blue states amid this battle. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul responded by writing on X: “Genuine question: Why is the Trump Administration so hellbent on people going hungry?”
This is also the impression you’d get from much of the media coverage. NBC News ran a story with the headline: “Trump administration threatens to withhold SNAP benefits from blue states over immigration data.” Over at Axios: “SNAP benefits at risk as states resist Trump’s immigration data demands.” PBS: “Trump administration says it will withhold SNAP from states led by Democrats if they don’t provide recipient data.”
This all felt like a redux of the shutdown disaster — SNAP benefits might get turned off again? Yikes. But that’s not what’s happening here. Rollins’ comments were vague, and understandably caused confusion, but USDA is actually planning to threaten states’ administrative funds, not SNAP benefits. The way it works right now is that USDA covers half the cost of administering SNAP at the state level (and states pick up the rest). USDA covers 100 percent of the benefits.
I confirmed that USDA is not threatening benefits by asking the department to clarify the situation.
“USDA established a SNAP integrity team to analyze not only data provided by states, but to scrub all available information to end indiscriminate welfare fraud,” a USDA spokesperson said in an email. The statement praised the 28 states (plus Guam) that turned over data and excoriated the states that have so far refused.
“They choose to protect illegals, criminals, and bad actors over the American taxpayer. We have sent Democrat States yet another request for data, and if they fail to comply, they will be provided with formal warning that USDA will pull their administrative funds,” the spokesperson added.
There’s no doubt that pulling admin funding would be a huge deal for these states and could ultimately harm program operations, but this is very different from withholding benefits for millions of people.
Bottom line: If USDA does end up withholding state admin funds in the coming weeks or months, there’s certain to be even more litigation over all of this. In the meantime, current SNAP beneficiaries should not be worried about their benefits being caught up in this particular fight.
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What I’m reading
New dietary guidelines delayed until early 2026 (New York Times). “The new Dietary Guidelines for Americans will not arrive until early 2026, a representative for the Department of Health and Human Services told The New York Times on Thursday, marking a delay of the release of the government’s official advice on what to eat and drink for good health,” reports Alice Callahan. “For months, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, has promised to overhaul the guidelines. Federal law requires that they are updated every five years; the current edition was supposed to be replaced by the end of 2025. In April, Mr. Kennedy said he would release the new guidelines in late summer or early fall, ahead of schedule. But the release was pushed back — first to later in the fall, and then to the end of the year. The representative cited the recent government shutdown as a reason for the latest delay.”
Landmark glyphosate paper retracted in random reckoning for a scientific relic (AgFunderNews). “A widely cited ‘hallmark’ paper on the safety of glyphosate-based chemical herbicides, including Roundup, was retracted last week by the journal that initially published it 25 years ago,” reports Jennifer Marston. “The move comes nearly a decade after it was revealed that Monsanto had likely ‘ghostwritten’ much of the paper … The retraction is occurring at a crucial moment for Roundup, now owned by Bayer. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is in the midst of its registration review process for glyphosate, which happens every 15 years. President Trump’s administration this week weighed in on the 67,000-plus lawsuits that allege Roundup causes cancer, urging the Supreme Court to take up Bayer’s recent appeal to curtail them. Bayer’s struggle to ‘significantly contain’ this litigation is well documented.”
1.5 million bags of shredded cheese have been recalled. Check your fridge for these brands (LA Times). “More than 1.5 million bags of different shredded cheeses sold at major retailers, including in California, have been voluntarily recalled due to possible metal contamination, authorities said,” Karen Garcia reports. “The recall was initiated in early October by Great Lakes Cheese Co., an Ohio-based company, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The voluntary recall covered more than 260,000 cases of shredded cheese, and was prompted by the possibility of metal fragments in the products, an FDA notice said. The FDA upgraded the recall Monday to ‘Class II,’ meaning the use of or exposure to the identified products can cause temporary or ‘medically reversible adverse health consequences.’ The company said it immediately isolated the affected raw material in its facilities and removed the packaged goods containing the foreign material.”
FDA expands use of advanced AI for safety reviews and inspections (Civil Eats). “The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Monday that it has deployed a version of artificial intelligence called ‘agentic AI’ for ‘all agency employees’ to assist with complex tasks, including safety reviews, inspections, and compliance,” reports Lisa Held. “While the release did not specifically mention food safety, the agency is responsible for monitoring the safety of the U.S. food supply (with the exception of meatpacking plants). And many of the activities mentioned, like pre-market reviews and inspections, apply to how the agency regulates food. In response to questions about how the FDA specifically plans to use agentic AI in its Human Foods Program, a spokesperson emphasized the role employees will continue to play. According to a recent ProPublica analysis, the Human Foods Program has lost 20 percent of its staff since January, due to the Trump administration’s campaign to shrink government agencies. Consumer Reports found the food side of the agency has not experienced the level of turmoil that the drug side has, but inspections of foreign facilities that supply the U.S. have dropped to historic lows.”
Could weight loss drugs turn fat cats into svelte Ozempets? (New York Times). “On Tuesday, Okava Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company based in San Francisco, is set to announce that it has officially begun a pilot study of a GLP-1 drug for cats with obesity. The company is testing a novel approach: Instead of receiving weekly injections of the drugs, as has been common in human patients, the cats will get small, injectable implants, slightly larger than a microchip, that will slowly release the drug for as long as six months,” writes Emily Anthes. “Results are expected next summer. If they are promising, they could represent the next frontier for a class of drugs that has upended human medicine, and a potentially transformative treatment option for millions of pets. Still, the success of GLP-1 drugs in veterinary medicine is hardly preordained. Large clinical trials are still needed, experts said, and it’s unclear whether the drugs will be affordable, or even appealing, to pet owners.”
How 3 grocers navigated the SNAP suspension (Grocery Dive). “As soon as independent grocer Gilpin Matthews found out that political wrangling in Washington, D.C., could threaten funding for SNAP, he turned to a well-worn playbook to ensure no one in the rural community where he lives would go hungry,” write Catherine Douglas Moran, Peyton Bigora, and Sam Silverstein. “Although only a small percentage of shoppers who visit the store he runs on Madeline Island in northern Wisconsin rely on the federally funded nutrition assistance program, Matthews has grown accustomed to supply chain disruptions over the past few years — and made a practice of stockpiling supplies. So when the USDA said it would stop distributing benefits to SNAP participants during the shutdown that paralyzed the government this fall, Matthews decided that if someone’s SNAP card didn’t work, he would give food away for free. ‘I [told] my staff, if anybody comes in and their card is not working and it’s not going through because it‘s shut down, call me immediately … and I would treat it like it’s any other major malfunction in the store,’ said Matthews, who together with his wife, Lauren Schuppe, owns Darlings Grocery. Grocery Dive gathered details from three grocers about how they reacted to the disruptions to the nutrition assistance program.”
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