Sponsors (10)
The bill directs modest federal funds to incentivize nutrient-rich dairy purchases for SNAP households and to fund local pilots, evaluations, and POS upgrades to improve uptake and evidence, while trading off modest new spending, potential retailer/admin burdens, and reduced choice for recipients.
Low-income SNAP households (including parents and families) receive point-of-purchase incentives to buy nutrient-rich dairy, lowering out-of-pocket food costs and improving diet quality.
Independent, rigorous evaluations (including randomized designs) will generate evidence on which incentive designs effectively increase healthy purchases, informing better federal SNAP policy.
State and local governments and nonprofits can compete for grants to run targeted pilots, enabling local adaptation and outreach to SNAP communities.
SNAP recipients are limited to earned incentives only for naturally nutrient-rich dairy, reducing flexibility to purchase other foods they may need or prefer.
Local incentive projects could be discontinued if evaluations are judged 'not satisfactory,' potentially ending programs that participants rely on.
Administrative and point-of-sale upgrade costs or complexity could fall on small retailers or require technical changes that deter retailer participation, limiting where incentives are available.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Establishes a USDA grant program to fund point-of-sale incentives that encourage SNAP households to buy 'naturally nutrient-rich' dairy (milk, yogurt, cheese).
Introduced March 13, 2025 by Amy Klobuchar · Last progress March 13, 2025
Creates a federal grant program to test and expand point-of-purchase incentives that encourage SNAP households to buy “naturally nutrient-rich” dairy (fluid milk, yogurt and other cultured cow’s-milk dairy products, and cheese). The Department of Agriculture must set up the program within 180 days and award competitive grants or cooperative agreements to state or local governments and nonprofits to run projects that provide EBT-compatible incentives at the point of sale. Grants must follow scientifically based selection criteria and prioritize projects that direct the most funding to participant incentives, restrict incentives so they can only be spent on qualifying dairy, serve SNAP populations, and use point-of-sale systems that can issue incentives electronically; startup support for EBT-enabled systems may be available. Each project must undergo independent evaluation to measure impacts on purchases, consumption, and diet quality.