The US Food Stamp Program is a federal assistance program that provides food to low income people living in the United States. Benefits are distributed by the individual states, but the program is administered through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Most food stamp benefits are now distributed using Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards but for most of its history the program has used paper vouchers of some kind.

Well Known Illegal Practice Affects Millions of EBT (Food Stamp) Card Holders' Food Benefits in the U.S. Apparently, due to lack of training & enforcement of applicabable laws & USDA Food Stamp Rules, markets & restraurants have been illegally charging sale tax & card processing fees from our poor and elderly - for years, totalling millions.

Foods stamped “USDA Organic” give consumers assurance that the product has met government standards. But those standards could allow the use of 38 non-organic ingredients, some of which are so widespread that virtually any processed food labeled “organic” could be made with one or more of them.

During May I'm feeding my husband and myself on a Food Stamp budget while maintaining our normal standard of eating - in our case, organic (mostly local) food and one alcoholic drink with dinner. I'm using the USDA "Thrifty Food Plan" as my guide - $320.80/month for a family of 2 adults, about $5.35 per person, per day. So far, so good.

Oregon governor Ted Kulongoski got lots of attention earlier this week as he tried to show us how allegedly inadequate the Food Stamp program is. However, the USDA's "food stamp budget" provides per-person per-week benefits to recipients with no other available resources that are 28%-70% higher than the $21 used in the article.

USDA to Rubber-Stamp contamination of food with illegal, genetically engineered rice banned in Japan and EuropeU.S. dismantles regulation of genetically engineered crops to serve interests of biotechnology industry.