FNS Documents & Resources

FNS Form AD-1049 is the USDA Certification Regarding Drug-Free Work Place Requirements (GRANTS) Alternative I - For Grantees Other than Individuals

From July to September 2002, FNS reviewed the free and reduced price eligibility determination process (i.e., application, verification, reapplication, meal ticket status) for each of 3,474 applications selected for verification in 14 large school food authorities in the 2001-02 school year. These SFAs enroll nearly one million children, among whom 45 percent were approved for free meals and 7 percent were approved for reduced price meals as of Oct. 31, 2001.

Food stamps are intended for food. When individuals sell their benefits for cash it violates the spirit and intent of the Food Stamp Program as well as the law. This practice, known as trafficking, diverts food stamp benefits away from their purpose. It reduces intended nutritional assistance and undermines public perceptions of the integrity and utility of the program. To combat trafficking, the Food and Nutrition Service conducts undercover investigations of authorized food stores. In addition, the agency has developed powerful new EBT-based administrative tools to identify and sanction traffickers.

FNS published “The WIC Vendor Management Study, 1998” in July 2001 which examined, in part, the extent to which retail grocers, defined as WIC “vendors” were violating program rules and regulations. The 1998 study is a follow-up to the “WIC Vendor Issues Study, 1991” published by FNS in May 1993. 

Cooperación del Programa de Cupones para Alimentos con investigaciones de fraude.

After a further review of this matter, and upon advice of our legal counsel, we have reconsidered our position on the use of the Request for Contact (RFC) to facilitate household cooperation with fraud investigations. We have decided that the RFC may only be issued by state eligibility workers and only when the state agency learns of a change in the household’s circumstances that calls into question the household’s continued eligibility for the program or its current level of benefits.

The NSLP offers free and reduced-price school meals to students from eligible households. Households with incomes at or below 130 percent of poverty are eligible for free meals, and households with incomes between 131 percent and 185 percent of poverty are eligible for reduced-price meals. Traditionally, to receive these benefits, households had to complete and submit application forms to schools or be directly certified. Direct certification, on the other hand, is a method of eligibility determination that does not require families to complete school meal applications. Instead, school officials use documentation from the local or state welfare agency that indicates that a household participates in AFDC or food stamps as the basis for certifying students for free school meals.

This rule proposes changes to the Child and Adult Care Food Program regulations. These changes result from the findings of state and federal program reviews and from audits and investigations conducted by the Office of Inspector General.

This report duplicates the precise methodology of the earlier analysis with more than 10,000 new investigations to generate an estimate for the 1996 - 1998 calendar year period.