Oscar Heanue is a law student in the Food Law & Policy Clinic of Harvard Law School and guest contributor on this blog. Thanks to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Online Purchasing Pilot, participants in the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) are now able to use their benefits online for the first time in the program’s history. However, although…
Julia Harvey is a law student at NYU School of Law and guest contributor on this blog. On September 9, 2020, USDA announced a new final rule that aligns egg safety inspection practices with those already used in other USDA-regulated industries including meat and poultry. The rule requires egg production facilities to develop and implement Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point…
Tanya Shahjanian is a law student at NYU School of Law and guest contributor on this blog. As the COVID-19 pandemic—and the resulting economic instability—persist into the fall season, underserved populations in the United States continue to suffer financially. Food insecurity remains high, and millions of families continue to rely on various federal food assistance programs to get by. Fears…
Katie Smith is a law student at NYU School of Law and guest contributor on this blog. COVID-19 is forcing the United States to become an even more internet-dependent society, and rural and Tribal communities are increasingly being left behind. As of 2016, over 30% of rural Americans and over 35% of Americans living on Tribal lands did not have…
Alexander Langer is a law student at NYU School of Law and guest contributor on this blog. After years of steadily rising global food security, more people will go hungry this year because of COVID-19 and the related global economic crisis. However, the global food system that is so vulnerable to these shocks continues to chug along, and U.S. global…
Hannah Yang is a law student at NYU School of Law and guest contributor on this blog. The USDA Food and Nutrition Service’s mission is “to increase food security and reduce hunger.” As part of its mission, it oversees the National School Lunch Program, which provides free or reduced lunch for eligible students while school is in session. The Summer…
The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a number of new and difficult challenges for families, farmers and other small business owners, and food producers across the country. While closures of schools, restaurants, and hotels help slow the rapid spread of infection, they have also resulted in surges in unemployment and food insecurity. Moreover, these closures cut farmers off from key markets…
This blogpost is cross-posted from the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic Blog. Original version here. Ali Schklair and MJ McDonald are interns at the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and guest contributors to this blog. In June 2020, the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis (Select Committee) released Solving the Climate Crisis, a comprehensive set of recommendations to confront…
Originally published at the Harvard Law School Center for Health Law & Policy, Food Law & Policy Blog. As the response to coronavirus continues and states increase or extend stay-at-home orders or advisories, the local food system is in a precarious position. The CARES Act stimulus explicitly includes the local food system in a new $9.5 billion disaster relief program. But…
While it’s currently a challenge not to keep up with the latest developments on COVID-19, you might not know that states have been tirelessly submitting requests to the federal government for major disaster declarations. At the time of this writing, New York, California, Washington, Louisiana, Iowa, New Jersey, Georgia, Oregon, Connecticut, Kentucky, South Carolina, Missouri, Maryland, Illinois, Florida, Texas, Colorado,…