Your Meals: The Food on your Fork

Food might feel simple: you go to the grocery store, grab what you need, and cook dinner. But the truth is, every bite you take is shaped by an enormous, mostly invisible system of protections and policies. From the safety checks that keep salmonella out of your chicken, to the subsidies that determine whether apples or chips are cheaper, to the trade rules that decide if there are avocados on the shelf — government programs touch your plate every single day.

Many people are asking themselves…

What if you didn’t know which foods were safe to eat? How does a fruit or vegetable grown in another state, or even country, stay fresh and clean all the way to my local store? Which kind of lettuce was it that made people sick? Who handled this steak all the way between the ranch and the refrigerator aisle? I heard that someone in another state got sick from peanut butter. Is the peanut butter in my state safe to eat? How did this listeria outbreak happen and which foods are safe? We have frozen meals that we bought months before the recall notice, are they safe to eat? What about the SNAP Cuts?  Will families really go hungry? How many people does SNAP reach anyway? Does SNAP just hand out money to people? SNAP benefits are so small anyway, don’t recipients have to have other money for food? Will losing SNAP benefits affect people’s eligibility for other benefits programs like school lunches or home-heating assistance? How does it affect our town if people who live here lose their SNAP benefits? What if farm subsidies were unfairly weighted towards certain kinds of crops or inadequate to meet farmers needs? What is a farm subsidy anyway? What if I don’t have the cash or credit to keep my farm running while we wait for the subsidies to arrive? What if we want to grow healthy food to sell directly in ours and nearby towns, will we qualify for subsidies?

How will I know which foods are safe to eat or when to see a doctor for a belly ache?

Every year, about 48 million Americans get sick, 128,00 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die from food-borne illness. This, in a country that ranks in the top twenty globally for food safety, and claims to have the safest food supply in the world. The FDA, USDA and CDC all work together to keep us safe by promoting safe and clean farming, shipping and storage, tracing the origins of pathogens found in food, and keeping us informed about risks and recalls. But right now, not just one, but all three of these agencies are being cut.

One of the ways we catch food poisoning outbreaks is by tracking them. In 2025, the FDA stopped tracking six dangerous pathogens—including listeria—through its FoodNet surveillance program, reducing its ability to spot emerging outbreaks quickly.

Inspections of facilities that import food into the US are at historic lows. Fewer inspections mean more imported food is entering the country without being checked for contamination, disease, or safety violations.

What if I can’t afford to feed my family?

47 million Americans experience food insecurity. That’s millions of us who can’t afford enough food to lead a normal healthy life.  It’s also millions more than the number of people who qualified for food stamps before the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill Act.  And, those people who do manage to qualify, are expected to feed themselves for $6 a day. Could you afford a healthy diet for $6 per day?

The Congressional Budget Office estimates at about 2.5 million Americans per month will lose SNAP benefits.

Food prices don’t stand still. But under the new law, SNAP benefits would be much less likely to increase when groceries get more expensive, leaving families with less buying power at the checkout line.

What if healthy food becomes even more expensive?

Farm subsidies are heavily weighted toward big commodity crops — corn, wheat, soy. Those are the ingredients that end up in animal feed, soda, and ultra-processed foods. At the same time, support for “specialty crops” like fruits, vegetables, and nuts is low. Even a billion dollars in subsidies that once went to farmers who grew food for school lunches has already been eliminated. Meanwhile, we import 60% of our our fruit and 40% of our vegetables. What does this mean for you? In simple terms, the food that’s bad for you gets cheaper, while the food that’s good for you gets more expensive.

Most federal farm subsidies don’t go to small family farms. More than 60% go to commodity crop producers, and according to the Cato Institute, more than two-thirds of subsidy dollars go to the largest 10% of farms.

Many of the fruits and vegetables Americans eat are imported. When trade policies shift suddenly and transportation costs increase, families often end up paying more at the checkout line.

Though it might not always seem like it, we have one of the safest and most plentiful food supplies of any country in the world.  Numerous government agencies help to keep it that way:

  • The Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA administers the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) of 2011 which gave it the authority to require food safety plans of producers and importers, conduct inspections, set safety standards, react to CDC reports and issue recalls. FSMA was the first major overhaul of our food safety laws since the 1930’s.
  • The US Department of Agriculture (USDA). USDA houses the Food Safety and Inspection Service.  It is the agency responsible for inspection of all meat, poultry and egg facilities. The USDA also administers the SNAP benefits, which millions of Americans rely on for food, and creates the Thrifty Food Plan which is the basis for the allotment of SNAP benefits. 
  • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC plays a key role in notifying other agencies, and the public, when there is an outbreak of a foodborne illness. They collect and monitor information about outbreaks of foodborne illness, provide that data to other agencies seeking to identify the source of an outbreak, and run public information campaigns to help people protect themselves from contaminated foods.
  • The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). More than 42 million Americans rely on SNAP benefits to afford food. And, more than 250,000 retailers, who employ thousands of people, accept SNAP benefits as payment. Drastic cuts to the program will lead to millions of people going hungry, and to many job losses.

Everyone has heard about cuts to nutrition assistance programs. And, there are more cuts and policy changes that will affect the safety and plentifulness of our food supply. These include an administration goal to shift all food inspection services to the states and the impact that tariffs may have on the pricing and availability of fresh food and produce, much of which we import from our trading partners to the north and south.

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