Overhaul to WIC Offers New Opportunities
Since 1972 the WIC Program, which is meant to improve the nutrition of low-income pregnant women, breastfeeding women, and infants and children under the age of five, has remained unchanged. For decades the federal program has operated “WIC stores” which only sell food for vouchers issued by the state WIC program and do not accept any other form of payment. These stores have offered a very limited menial selection of fresher food choices to clients who often need such foods the most. Some have also criticized WIC for preventing small producers, retailers and nonprofits to participate in the effort to bring healthier foods to low-income families.
In the last month a flurry of discussion and activity has been taking place as WIC undertakes a long needed change. The foods provided to millions of low-income families through WIC will be updated and improved through a new campaign called WIConnect. Most importantly, these changes will enable households to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains and soy products. They will also provide more ethnic products and lower overall fat and sugar content.
These new WIC food changes could result in dramatic health improvements in communities most impacted by limited consumption of fresh and healthy foods. This change could also have a big impact on the movement for local foods and provide support to small-scale producers, as well as efforts to increase healthy food access in urban areas. Similarly to embracing the opportunities presented by changes in the EBT food stamp program, People’s Grocery plans to utilize these reforms to WIC to develop unique offers in food retail business. By embracing WIC we will not only be able to help more families purchase local, fresh and quality foods, but the financial performance of our new venture will be strengthen by a wider offer. This is important as one of People’s Grocery’s goals is to demonstrate that an inner city food retail model can be successful, can support local jobs and can provide a strong voice for both local foods and community food justice.
March 15th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Just a quick note — the Feds don’t operate WIC-only stores. They’re operated by entrepreneurial folk who saw a niche and filled it. In addition to having limited inventory, as you pointed out above, WIC-only stores often have higher prices than more traditional stores. I’m glad to hear the People’s Grocery will be accepting WIC and EBT.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Thanks for clarifying the ownership of the WIC stores. Clearly I too have more to learn about these program. Below is an email i received from Karen Farley who is from the CA WIC Association. She helps clarify a number of additional aspects related to WIC and the impending changes to the program.
From Karen Farley:
I was checking out your blog and we appreciate your posting information about the WIC food package. I wanted to provide some info that is important for folks.
The WIC stores are not run by WIC. They are private enterprises. In some cases they have marketed themselves in such a way to appear that they are part of the program, but they are WIC vendors, totally separate from the WIC program. Vendors also include the larger supermarkets and independent grocers. There are about 4,000 WIC authorized vendors in CA. Various grocer representatives, but particularly the WIC only stores, will also be at the summit if you want to network.
I wanted to provide a link to the WIC program website. www.wicworks.ca.gov There is also a lot of good info there for vendors, which is constantly being updated.
We appreciate the link to the CA WIC Association, but I just wanted to note we are a separate nonprofit association. We support the work of WIC. You could include both links. Our link is www.calwic.org which is what you have as the WIC Program.
Finally, the link to the WIConnect campaign is great- thank you.
Please feel free to contact me with questions.
Thank you for your partnership at this exciting time.
Best,
Karen
April 3rd, 2008 at 5:31 am
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April 9th, 2008 at 2:48 am
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April 11th, 2008 at 12:03 am
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