USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack Wednesday told a National Press Foundation meeting that he does support the Food Box program deployed by the Trump administration and said that it would run through April, but again said there could be changes to the effort ahead and that no decision to continue it had been made.
A review of the program is underway at USDA, Vilsack said, including that if the program or “something akin to a food box program” were continued, would it be on a smaller, more-targeted scale.
“No decision has been made as to whether or not it will be extended and if extended what it will look like,” he said. He did suggest that one option could be to involve The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) as that program has an established distribution system in getting food out to nonprofits and charities.
It still appears that the popular program will continue in some form given the overall concept has won backing of some key lawmakers. However, expectations have been that the effort will be tweaked from its initial version and it could be renamed or as Vilsack suggests, combined with another existing effort such as TEFAP.