Alliance to End Hunger Strongly Urges Passage of COVID-19 Relief Including Food Security and Nutrition Support
December 17, 2020
WASHINGTON (December 17, 2020) – The Alliance to End Hunger urges the speedy passage of a COVID-19 relief bill that includes substantial funding for food security and nutrition programs in the U.S. and globally.
“We are at a point in which hunger is drastically increasing everywhere due to the COVID-19 crisis,” states Eric Mitchell, Executive Director of the Alliance. “This is no time to be playing politics with lives of hungry individuals and families.”
COVID-19 relief legislation is currently being negotiated within Congress. Disappointingly, negotiations are encountering disagreements related to domestic and global food security and nutrition programming. One sticking point appears to be a proposal to increase funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by 15% for four months – a proposal that the Alliance has strongly supported. The Alliance also supports additional funding for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and senior nutrition services.
Globally, the Alliance is urging no less than $20 billion for the U.S. response to the global crisis. Including $2 billion for food security programming and $500 million for nutrition.
Funding for hunger relief and nutrition is essential to meeting the growing need. In the United States, the Household Pulse Survey recently reported that 13 percent of American adults – and 17 percent of adults with children in the household – did not have enough food to eat in the past seven days. Globally, the number of people facing acute malnutrition or worse could double to 270 million.
“In the same month that the World Food Programme received the Nobel Peace Prize, these discussions around whether or not to provide additional support to hungry people are simply unconscionable,” says Mitchell. “People needed this relief yesterday. Get this legislation done.”
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The Alliance to End Hunger engages diverse institutions to build the public and political will to end hunger at home and abroad. Our coalition of corporations, nonprofits, universities, foundations, individuals, and more work with their unique constituencies to raise the profile of the issues of hunger, nutrition, and agriculture to elected officials and broader stakeholders.