Federal food program cuts seniors who live in poverty

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http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/DN-food_06met.ART0.North.Edition2.90f60cd.html

More than 700 Dallas County senior citizens living in poverty have been cut from a federal program that provided them with 25-pound boxes of free groceries each month. The local seniors were among 59,000 people nationwide who lost assistance from the Commodity Supplemental Food Program on Feb. 1.


"The reality of the situation is, people are going to fall through the cracks," said Jan Pruitt, the local food bank's chief executive officer. "They're going to go pick up their box, and it's not going to be there, and they're not going to go anywhere else."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reduced the program because of rising food costs and budget cuts, spokeswoman Jean Daniel said. About 477,000 elderly people and women with children in 32 states and the District of Columbia now receive the food boxes, down from 536,000 in 2005. The only other Texas county to participate is Webb.

The federal government encourages people dropped from the program to apply for other federal nutrition programs, including food stamps.