WASHINGTON — Amid persistent child hunger and food insecurity in the United States, lawmakers and advocates on Wednesday stressed the importance of school meal programs during a U.S. Senate Agriculture subcommittee hearing.
Hunger severely impacts kids’ emotional and physical well-being and can lead to negative outcomes in school, research has shown. Last year, 47.4 million people lived in food-insecure households, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Federally funded efforts, such as the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program, provide free and reduced- cost meals to students across the country.
Advocates say these programs play a crucial role in helping to reduce child hunger and urged the panel to expand them.
“School lunch should always be free and definitely free of judgment,” said Sen. John Fetterman, who chairs the Subcommittee on Food and Nutrition, Specialty Crops, Organics, and Research.
“Honestly, it shouldn’t be a conversation — it would be like asking the kids to pay for the school bus every morning or to pay for their own textbooks at school,” Fetterman said.
Fetterman and fellow Pennsylvania Democrat Sen. Bob Casey introduced two bills in June aiming to expand free or reduced-price meals access for kids. Part of the initiatives also call for amending the Community Eligibility Provision, which allows schools and school districts in low-income areas to offer free meal options to all students.
Fetterman also sponsored the Universal School Meals Program Act, an effort introduced by independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders last May, which would “provide free breakfast, lunch, and dinner to every student — without demanding they prove they are poor enough to deserve help getting three meals a day,” according to Sanders’ summary of the bill. U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, introduced a companion bill.
Subcommittee ranking member Mike Braun of Indiana said he introduced the American Food for American Schools Act last July with Ohio Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown in an effort “to better prioritize and support the use of American food in school meal programs.”
That bipartisan bill would increase requirements for school meals to include U.S. products.
Crystal FitzSimons, interim president of the Food Research and Action Center, pointed out that eight states have implemented policies that offer school meals to all students, regardless of one’s household income. Those states are California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico and Vermont.
The national nonprofit aims to reduce poverty-related hunger in the U.S. through research, advocacy and policy solutions.
“While those eight states are showing us what is possible, there are critical steps the subcommittee and Congress should take to enhance the reach and impact of school meals nationwide,” FitzSimons said.
As one piece of the puzzle, FitzSimons said Congress can “ensure that all children nationwide are hunger-free and ready to learn while they are at school by allowing all schools to offer meals to all their students at no charge” and the Universal School Meals Program Act “creates that path.”
