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TagsBY BOB HOLT
NEWJERSEYNEWROOM.COM
The number of Americans eligible for food stamps has risen by 10 million over the past two years. But the program has proven quite profitable to a number of companies.
A recent report from EatDrinkPolitics.com indicates that more than a few companies are happy with the way things are.
According to the Daily, JPMorgan Chase has exclusive food stamp benefit contracts in 26 states and territories. including a five-year, $83 million contract in Florida, and a seven-year, $125 million contract in New York. A Xerox subsidiary and defense contractor Northrop Grumman also have food stamp programs.
After signing contracts with given states, the contractor puts government money onto the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamp debit cards, and gets some money back per card. Each time a user swipes their card, the bank approves the transaction, and keeps records, while the government does not. And the contractor can outsource customer service to save more money if it is not stipulated in the contract that transactions be handled in the U.S.
But public data is not collected on how the food stamp funds are spent. The United States Department of Agriculture says it is illegal to collect information about the companies.
AlterNet reported that nine Walmart Supercenters in Massachusetts took in more than $33 million in SNAP money in one year, over four times the cash spent at farmers markets across the nation. And in two years, Walmart received about half of $1 billion spent on the SNAP program in Oklahoma.
There are limited restrictions on items that can be purchased with food stamps, but with obesity rates increasing among the poor, some people believe more should be put in place.
Marion Nestle, a professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University told Yahoo! Finance that a lot of food stamp money goes right to soda and snack food companies, and to the stores that sell them. She says food stamps account for 25 to 40 percent of revenue at some stores.
Wal-Mart "gets a large fraction of Food Stamp dollars," Nestle said. Other companies seeing benefits from the program are Pepsi, Coke, and Kraft.
Next thing you know we'll be told what to eat, when to eat it and how to eat it and with who. Freedoms people. Let's not lose them.
Should people make smarter food choices? Yes. But give yourself an 50 per week food budget to feed your whole family and tell me what you bought to not have then starve by weeks end.