By Jennifer Kohlhepp, Managing Editor
ROBBINSVILLE — It may be out of sight but it’s within reach of one in four Americans.
Traveling down Route 526 near the township’s border with Allentown it’s easy to pass the blue and white sign without noticing it.
The sign sits perched at the end of Corporate Boulevard, a long driveway that leads to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service Mid-Atlantic Regional Office.
“We are one of seven regional offices within the food and nutrition service,” Regional Administrator Patricia Dombroski said. “The other offices are in Chicago, Atlanta, Boston, Denver, San Francisco and Dallas. We’re in the metropolis of Robbinsville.”Although many may not notice it, the office has been located off Route 526 since 1977 and it represents New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
“We oversee 15 nutritional assistance programs and touch one in four Americans in the course of a year,” Ms. Dombroski said.
The Food and Nutrition Service, formerly known as the Food and Consumer Service, administers the nutrition assistance programs of the USDA. The mission is to provide children and needy families better access to food and a more healthful diet through its food assistance programs and comprehensive nutrition education efforts.The cornerstone program is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which was formerly the Food Stamp Program. There’s also the school nutrition programs, such as the National School Lunch Program, which feeds 30.3 million students in America; the School Breakfast Program, which feeds 14 million children nationally; and the Women Infant Children (WIC) program, which helps 8.3 million across the nation.
Currently, the regional office is trying to promote its Summer Food Service Program, which provides nutritious meals to children when school is out for summer. The program started in 1975 with residential summer camps and sites serving areas of poor economic conditions, where at least one-third of the children who qualify for free and reduced price meals, were eligible to participate. Summer meals were served to more than 1.75 million children, at 12,000 sites.
Today, the program has even further reach.
“On an average day in July, we serve 2.4 million children,” Ms. Dombroski said.
She added, “A child needs meals during the summer so they are ready to work when they go back to school.” The Food and Nutrition Service also wants parents and guardians to know about the School Breakfast Program, which was established as a pilot program in 1966. In 1975 the program received permanent authorization, with Congress declaring its intent that the program “be made available in all schools where it is needed to provide adequate nutrition for children in attendance.“ Moreover, the legislation continued to emphasize participation by schools in severe need and to provide higher reimbursement to these schools. In 2013, the School Breakfast Program served 242,563 children in New Jersey.
“New Jersey schools have found that children who have breakfast and so much more ready to learn for the day,” Ms. Dombroski said. “Statistics show there a less visits to the school nurse and students are more alert and there are less disciplinary problems and all of that’s attributed to children eating breakfast.”
The Food and Nutrition Service has elevated nutrition and nutrition education to a top priority in all its programs. In addition to providing access to nutritious food, the service also works to empower program participants with knowledge of the link between diet and health, according to Ms. Dombroski. She also said the service supports farmers markets and farm to school initiatives as ways to improve nutrition and promote healthy eating.
Overall, the regional Food and Nutrition Service office dedicates 107 employees and a budget of $13.5 billion to providing oversight and technical assistance to state agencies that administer the programs, according to Ms. Dombroski.
States determine most administrative details regarding distribution of food benefits and eligibility of participants, and the Food and Nutrition Service provides funding to cover most of the states’ administrative costs. For example, New Jersey’s Department of Human Services administers SNAP through county social services offices. Nationally, SNAP helps 46.5 million Americans and in New Jersey served 876,266 at a cost of $1.5 billion in 2013.
“In SNAP over 50 percent, more than half, of the participants are children, the elderly and the disabled, which is not the average person’s image of a SNAP recipient,” Ms. Dombroski said.
The service also partners with local food banks, the anti-hunger community, organizations like Feeding America, and the Dairy Council.
“Overall our nutrition programs work in every community to fight hunger and improve health,” Ms. Dombroski said.
