In the United States, more than 40 million Americans are part of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), receiving monthly financial assistance that subsidizes the purchase of basic food items at retail chains, supermarkets, grocery stores, and other stores authorized.

However, after the prolonged 43-day government shutdown, many social programs, including SNAP, were affected by a lack of funding, leading to a suspension of benefits during the month of November.

Nevertheless, after the government reopened, the program, which depends on funding from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), announced some changes, including a requirement for beneficiaries to re-enroll in order to prevent fraud.

These adjustments could lead to more than 3 million Americans losing their SNAP benefits, since, from the middle of this year, the program has been implementing new application requirements such as; the employment requirements.

The announcement was made by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who stated on Monday that “households will need to demonstrate that they meet the eligibility requirements to continue receiving benefits.”

For his part, Joel Berg, executive director of the nonprofit food aid organization Hunger Free America, believes that with the USDA's initiative to re-enroll, “millions of people are going to lose food. There is no doubt that this will generate more harm, suffering, and hunger,” he mentioned.

While SNAP represents a lifeline for millions of low-income or low-resource households, Rollins is concerned about the eligibility review and pointed out that currently “the system is plagued by fraud,” so the goal is to direct the benefit to those who truly need it.“There are vulnerable families in the United States who need this program and are not receiving it due to fraud and abuse, which we are now going to address,” he added.