[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 5011-5014]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            DOMESTIC HUNGER

 Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I take this opportunity to briefly 
talk about the problem of hunger in our nation. I would also like to 
place into the Congressional Record two recent front-page articles from 
the New York Times, written by Andrew Revkin. These articles provide 
valuable insight into the growing demand for emergency food assistance 
that food banks around the country have been facing over the last 
couple of years.
  Mr. President, as we approach the beginning of the next century, we 
have much to be proud of as a nation. The stock market has reached an 
historic 10,000 mark. We are in the midst of one of the greatest 
economic expansions in our nation's history. More Americans own their 
own homes than at any time, and we have the lowest unemployment and 
welfare caseloads in a generation. Not to mention the fact that for the 
first time in three decades, there is a surplus in the federal budget.
  Yet, there are millions of Americans who go hungry every day. This is 
morally unacceptable. We must resolve to put an end to the pernicious 
occurrence of hunger in our nation. Hunger is not a Democrat or 
Republican issue. Hunger is a problem that all Americans should agree 
must be ended in our nation.
  While it is true that food stamp and welfare program caseloads are 
dropping, hunger is not. As families try to make the transition from 
welfare to work, too many are falling out and being left behind. And 
too often, it is our youth who is feeling the brunt of this, as one out 
of every five people lining up at soup kitchens is a child.
  Second Harvest, the nation's largest hunger relief charity, 
distributed more than one billion pounds of food to an estimated 26 
million low-income Americans last year through their network of 
regional food banks. These food banks provide food and grocery products 
to nearly fifty thousand local charitable feeding programs--food 
shelves, pantries, soup kitchens and emergency shelters.
  Just as demand is rising at local hunger relief agencies, too many 
pantries and soup kitchens are being forced to turn needy people away 
because the request for their services exceeds available food. Today I 
enter into the record stories detailing some of the problems that these 
local hunger relief agencies, as chronicled in the New York Times.
  Last December, Peter Clavelle, Mayor of Burlington, Vermont, released 
the U.S. Conference of Mayors Annual Survey of Hunger and Homelessness. 
The Mayors reported that demand for hunger relief services grew 14 
percent last year. Additionally, 21 percent of requests for emergency 
food are estimated to have gone unmet. This is the highest rate of 
unmet need by emergency food providers since the recession of the early 
1990s. And this is not just a problem of the inner cities. According to 
the Census Bureau, hunger and poverty are growing faster in the suburbs 
than anywhere else in America. In my own state of Vermont, one in ten 
people is ``food insecure,'' according to government statistics. That 
is, of course, just a clinical way to say they are hungry or at risk of 
hunger.
  Under the leadership of Deborah Flateman, the Vermont Food Bank in 
South Barre distributes food to approximately 240 private social 
service agencies throughout the state to help hungry and needy 
Vermonters. Just last week, the thousands of Vermonters who receive 
food from the Food Bank came perilously close to finding out what life 
would be like without its support, when the roof of the Food Bank's 
main warehouse collapsed. Though the warehouse was destroyed, the need 
for food was not, and the Vermont Food Bank is continuing its operation 
while being temporarily housed in a former nursing home. I applaud the 
efforts of Deborah and all of the workers and volunteers of the Food 
Bank who are persevering over this huge obstacle and are keeping food 
on the table for many hungry Vermonters.
  The local food shelves and emergency kitchens which receive food from 
the Vermont Food Bank clearly are on the front-line against hunger. And 
what they are seeing is very disturbing--one in four seeking hunger 
relief is a child under the age of 17. Elderly people make up more than 
a third of all emergency food recipients. We cannot continue to allow 
so many of our youngest and oldest citizens face the prospect of hunger 
on a daily basis.
  Perhaps the most troubling statistic about hunger in Vermont is that 
in 45 percent of the households that receive charitable food 
assistance, one or more adults are working. Nationwide, working poor 
households represent more than one-third of all emergency food 
recipients. These are people in

[[Page 5012]]

Vermont and across the U.S. who are working, paying taxes and 
contributing to the economic growth of our nation, but are reaping few 
of the rewards.
  Of the many problems that we face as a nation, hunger is one that is 
entirely solvable. It is my hope that my colleagues will read these 
articles, and that this body can then begin to take serious action 
during the 106th Congress, especially as we embark upon the fiscal year 
2000 budget process, to end domestic hunger.
  I ask that the two articles from the New York Times, dated February 
26, and February 27, 1999 be printed in the Record.
  The articles follow:

                [From the New York Times, Feb. 27, 1999]

     As Demand for Food Donations Grows, Supplies Steadily Dwindle

                         (By Andrew C. Revkin)

       Ron Taritas was sitting in his office on the lake front in 
     Chicago, phone in hand, dialing for donations. He was not 
     having a very good day.
       As one of four full-time brokers at Second Harvest, the 
     country's largest nonprofit clearinghouse for donations to 
     soup kitchens and food pantries, Taritas has the job of 
     reeling in the grocery industry's castoffs--the mislabeled 
     cans, outdated cartons and unpopular brands that will never 
     make it to supermarket shelves.
       But eight hours into this day, his best catch was 4,000 
     cases of Puffed Wheat, Raisin Bran, Honey Smacks and other 
     cereals. Beyond that, all he had to show for his work was 32 
     cases of chocolate-crunch energy bars from a warehouse in 
     Honolulu, 500 cases of bottled spring water from Tucson, 
     Ariz., and 5,000 cases of Cremora from Columbus, Ohio.
       ``Some days,'' Taritas said, ``it's like catching smoke.''
       These are anxious times at Second Harvest, the hub of 
     America's sprawling system of church-basement soup kitchens 
     and food pantries.
       Over nearly two decades, that network has expanded to serve 
     more than $1 billion worth of food each year to 20 million 
     Americans. But now, as changes in welfare policy push many 
     people away from the public dole, private charity is lagging 
     even further behind in its efforts to feed the lengthening 
     lines.
       Part of the problem, by the charities' account, is rising 
     demand on a system that was never really able to keep up in 
     the first place. Last year, Second Harvest calculated that it 
     would have to double the flow of food to supply everyone 
     seeking help.
       But the supply side has begun to hit hard times, too. Most 
     troubling to the charities is the cooling of their 
     traditional symbiotic relationship with America's food-making 
     giants, in which millions of tons of surplus food products 
     has flowed to people in need.
       From the first, the key to that relationship was the 
     industry's propensity for waste--and the charities' eagerness 
     to make it go away, gracefully. But in the streamlining 
     spirit of business in the late 1990's, the food makers are 
     simply making fewer errors. And so there is less surplus food 
     to pass along.
       These days, a mantra of grocery manufacturers is ``zero 
     defects.'' Chicken not good enough for cutlets is pressed 
     into nuggets; scraps not good enough for nuggets are 
     pulverized into pet food. Sales figures from checkout 
     scanners are fed daily to manufacturers, allowing factories 
     to fine-tune their output to match demand.
       And in the last few years, heaps of dented or out-of-date 
     cans and cartons have become the basis for an estimated $2 
     billion-a-year market in ``unsalable'' food. Instead of being 
     donated, damaged goods are exported to developing countries 
     or resold at sharp discounts in suburban flea markets, 
     unlicensed stores in rural areas or warehouse-style outlets.
       Certainly, the grocery makers still turn out a lot of 
     surplus food. But over the last three years, after rising 
     steadily for more than 15 years, the donations that are the 
     core of Second Harvest's business have fallen 10 percent. And 
     while a glut of pork and the Asian economic crisis allowed 
     the Federal Government to kick in an unexpected burst of 
     unsold meat and produce last year, demand is increasingly 
     outstripping supply.
       Although the drop is not enormous, it has already begun to 
     reverberate across the far-flung charity network. From Second 
     Harvest to the regional food banks and then down to the local 
     outlets, the charities have been forced to devise all manner 
     of new strategies to keep the food coming. They are cutting 
     new deals with the grocery makers. They are reaching out to 
     farmers and fishermen. Mainly, they are spending more of 
     their time and scant money chasing additional, but smaller, 
     donations from local sources instead of big corporations.
       Some food pantries and soup kitchens remain relatively 
     flush. But across the country, thousands of others are 
     cutting hours, limiting the size and frequency of handouts, 
     rationing coveted items like hot dogs and peanut butter and 
     seeking unorthodox supplements like road-killed deer, 
     according to state and local surveys and Second Harvest 
     reports. Some are even having to turn people away.
       Last year, half the food charities in New York City cut the 
     size of handouts at least part of the year, according to a 
     survey by the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, a 
     private group. Largely for lack of food, the coalition has 
     begun counseling churches and synagogues against setting up 
     new pantries and soup kitchens.
       At the end of the emergency-food chain--the men, women and 
     children standing in line at the church-basement door--that 
     faltering flow of donations is calling into question the 
     notion that private charity should, and can, soften the sting 
     of losing public entitlements. These days, a lot of people in 
     the food-banking business are worrying that a system created 
     as a supplement to public aid is turning out to be an 
     increasingly ineffective substitute for it.


       the charity network: source in a crisis is now a mainstay

       Twenty-five years ago, the only food bank in New Jersey was 
     Kathleen DiChiara, a homemaker from Summit who carted canned 
     goods in her station wagon from food drives at churches to 
     people in need. Around the country, food pantries and soup 
     kitchens were almost unknown beyond Skid Row.
       But as the deep recession of the early 1980's took hold, 
     followed by the budget cuts of the Reagan era, growing 
     numbers of people found themselves without adequate food. 
     Dozens, and then hundreds, of soup kitchens and food pantries 
     sprouted where none had been seen since the Depression.
       Even so, Ms. DiChiara recalled, there was always a feeling 
     that the crisis would pass: Congress would restore money for 
     social programs; the economy would revive.
       But while the economy rebounded and Congress provided 
     relief for the poor, the demand for food handouts grew, along 
     with the charity network. And by the late 1980's, people in 
     the food-banking business had begun to realize that they were 
     becoming a fixture on the American landscape--more a 
     secondary safety net than an emergency source of food.
       Today, Ms. DiChiara runs one of the biggest food-banking 
     operations in the country, the Community Food Bank of New 
     Jersey, with a fleet of trucks that each month distributes a 
     million pounds of food out of a 280,000-square-foot 
     warehouse. New York City, which had only three dozen pantries 
     and soup kitchens in 1980, had 600 in 1992 and now has about 
     1,100. Across the nation, the food network is more than 
     40,000 soup kitchens and food pantries strong, with more than 
     3,000 paid employees and 900,000 volunteers.
       Almost from the beginning, the food network formed a tight 
     alliance with grocery manufacturers. The charities offered a 
     perfect outlet, allowing manufacturers and stores to dispose 
     of damaged or unsold goods, cut dumping costs, gain tax 
     breaks and get some good publicity along the way.
       Soon, the relationship was institutionalized in formal 
     agreements, and food company executives joined the boards of 
     Second Harvest and its regional food banks.
       But all along, there was a queasy feeling that this cozy, 
     co-dependent relationship could not last. Sooner or later, 
     the food bankers knew, they would begin to pay for their 
     reliance on the industry's prodigal past.
       Soon after Thomas Debrowski became head of operations for 
     the Pillsbury Company in 1991, the community relations people 
     walked into his office in Minneapolis and presented him with 
     records of the regular annual donation of several million 
     pounds of flawed or unsold food to Second Harvest.
       ``They wanted to know if we wanted to increase it,'' 
     Debrowski recalls. ``I said, `Increase? My objective is to 
     give them nothing next year.' ''
       To an executive charged with burnishing the bottom line, in 
     a business climate where everyone was on the prowl for 
     greater efficiencies, the idea that millions of pounds of 
     food was either failing inspection or going stale in 
     warehouses was not acceptable. And before long, like most of 
     the big food companies, Pillsbury instituted economies up and 
     down the production line.
       On the line for Green Giant Niblets brand corn, where 
     workers once picked out discolored kernels by hand, 
     electronic eyes now detect the rejects, and a puff of air 
     blasts the offending kernel from the conveyer belt.
       Shipping containers that tended to be crushed have been 
     redesigned.
       At a Minute Maid Hi-C fruit punch plant in Wharton, N.J., 
     the process has been streamlined so that the raw ingredients 
     arrive just 6 to 10 hours before a batch of juice is 
     packaged, maintaining freshness and reducing the chance of a 
     bad run. Where previously juice was not tested for quality 
     until it had been canned, continual checks are now made for 
     factors like sweetness, flavor, color and vitamin content 
     right on the assembly line.
       Improvements in marketing have paralleled those in 
     manufacturing.
       In the wasteful old days, new products were tested 
     according to the Darwinian laws of the marketplace: A company 
     would blanket the nation with the various new snack foods, 
     for example, knowing that some were sure to fail. Only the 
     fittest survived. The rest ended up in somebody's food bank.
       Now, instead of ``pushing'' products out into the market, 
     as industry argot would

[[Page 5013]]

     have it, the focus is on having them ``pulled'' into stores.
       That means doing research to gauge consumer interests, 
     testing products in carefully dissected markets before 
     distributing them widely and tailoring production to sales. 
     The result is far fewer stacks of failed experiments and 
     formerly fashionable foods, like the oat bran cookies and 
     muffins that became a staple at the nation's food banks after 
     the fad faded in the early 90's.
       Over all, what this means is that after rising steadily 
     until 1995, when they reached 285 million pounds, annual 
     donations from the big national food companies dropped to 259 
     million pounds in 1998.
       To a certain extent, the food charities had become their 
     own worst enemy by making waste so identifiable, said Janet 
     E. Poppendieck, a Hunter College sociologist and author of a 
     new book, ``Sweet Charity: Emergency Food and the End of 
     Entitlement'' (Viking Press, 1998).
       ``No firm is going to continue to put labels on jars upside 
     down so that there will be peanut butter at the food bank,'' 
     she said.


          `banana box deals': new competition for flawed goods

       At the supermarket, the can or carton of soup or cereal 
     that still fails to sell, or is dented after falling off a 
     truck or store shelf, remains the biggest single source of 
     food for the charity pipeline.
       Now, in a shift that has the companies and the charities 
     alarmed, more and more of these products are finding their 
     way back out to paying customers.
       Over the last decade, a host of ``reclamation centers'' 
     have evolved as a way for supermarket chains to tally damage 
     and charge manufacturers for losses. At the centers, leaky 
     packages are thrown out, and any usable products are repacked 
     in the rectangular cartons in which bananas are shipped. Some 
     are donated to Second Harvest, particularly if the 
     manufacturer requested that option. But, more and more, the 
     cans and cartons are sold, at pennies on the dollar, to 
     wholesalers who sell them yet again.
       One recent posting on a Web site for salvaged goods, by a 
     Massachusetts company called I-ADA Merchandise Marketing, 
     made this offer: ``Eight trailer loads of food from one of 
     the leading department store chains in the U.S.A. All food is 
     in date and has been gone through to discard any unmarketable 
     merchandise. This is super clean merchandise. Packed in 
     banana boxes. All boxes are full. You will not find a better 
     banana box deal!!!!!''
       In this trade, Second Harvest sees competition for a scarce 
     resource. Companies like Lipton, Campbell Soup and Quaker 
     Oats find themselves in a tug of war with their retailers 
     over control of this damaged merchandise. With brand names 
     they have nurtured for decades, the manufacturers fear 
     liability and loss of consumer loyalty if a flea market 
     shopper becomes ill after eating one of their products on 
     this largely unregulated market. For their part, the 
     retailers say the goods are their property to dispose of as 
     they wish.
       So far, this emerging market has not significantly slowed 
     the flow of donated damaged goods to charities, but staff 
     members at several large food charities project that it will. 
     Indeed, clearly threatened by this booming trade, Second 
     Harvest this year said it would enter the salvage business 
     itself, offering to provide a secure final resting spot of 
     damaged goods, distributing usable items only through its 
     charity network and destroying anything that cannot be used.


           reinventing the deal: factory runs for the hungry

       Second Harvest and smaller food charities are trying a host 
     of other strategies as they scurry to keep goods on charity 
     shelves.
       ``Everyone knew the charities were going to be expected to 
     do more now,'' Ms. DiChiara said. ``What I'm finding is that 
     we're expected to do more with less.''
       Until two years ago, Golden Grain, a pasta maker, donated 
     thousands of pounds of noodles each month to the Greater 
     Chicago Food Depository, the second largest food bank in the 
     Second Harvest network. But donations fell after the company 
     figured out how to grind up substandard pasta and feed it 
     back through its machines, said the food bank's executive 
     director, Michael P. Mulqueen.
       Ultimately, the food bank and the pasta maker came up with 
     a way to compensate for lost donations by running the factory 
     at times of low market demand to create noodles just for the 
     food bank, Mulqueen said. Pillsbury's Thomas Debrowski 
     instituted a similar practice several years ago, and Minute 
     Maid has begun making juice for Second Harvest. Some other 
     companies, like Kraft, have shifted to cash donations.
       Charities are also approaching farmers to scavenge leftover 
     crops, conducting the Biblical ``second harvest'' for which 
     the national group is named. The Clinton Administration last 
     year announced plans for an ambitious campaign to glean some 
     of the mountains of imperfect produce that now go to waste 
     each year.
       And last year, Second Harvest began distributing tons of 
     Pacific Northwest fish that is caught in nets but cannot be 
     sold because of Federal regulations controlling some fish 
     stocks. The program, created with Northwest Food Strategies, 
     a nonprofit group in Seattle, now sends frozen salmon, 
     halibut and other fish around the country.
       As always, canned-food drives by scouting groups and 
     religious congregations are being employed, but they provide 
     a fraction of the total flow, and the assortment of goods 
     often does not contain the foods that are most needed--stew 
     or cereal and the like.
       At the Neighbor to Neighbor food pantry in Greenwich, 
     Conn., there is a ``gourmet section,'' which recently 
     contained goose liver pate, lemon curd and bamboo shoots.
       Over all, experience has produced a discouraging sense at 
     Second Harvest and other food banks that whenever they 
     identify a new source of food, it seems to dry up.
       ``You peck away,'' said James Barone, who is in charge of 
     procuring supplies for Food for Survival, the main New York 
     city food bank. ``And it's a constant battle.''
       For several years, trucks and crews from Food for Survival 
     have toured the Hunt's Point produce market in the Bronx each 
     morning after the supermarkets or other retailers have bought 
     their supply for the day, seeking donations of overripe 
     tomatoes or wilted lettuce or whatever else is left.
       But the city's greengrocers appear to have noticed, and 
     they often now wait until the end of the morning sales 
     period, then offer cash, at a lower-than-usual price, for 
     goods that might once have found their way into the charity 
     system.


            limits on Charity: Bare Cupboards and Saying No

       At the food pantry in the basement of St. Raymond's Roman 
     Catholic Church in the Parkchester section of the Bronx, the 
     impact of the irregular flow of goods is apparent as soon as 
     you walk in the door.
       There is the large sign on a bulletin board: ``Alert. This 
     food pantry is experiencing shortages. We reserve the right 
     to limit quantities, limit the number of visits, extend the 
     time between visits at any time and without prior notice.''
       And there are the plastic bags of canned goods, rice and 
     cereal handed out to a steady stream of old people, young 
     women and a few young men. These days, the volunteers making 
     up the grocery bags have less to choose from, because of a 
     backlog of orders at Food for Survival.
       Even basics like bread and juice are lacking lately, said 
     Priscilla DiNapoli, the program's paid coordinator. When the 
     Kellogg's Corn Flakes run out, as they inevitably do, the 
     workers hand out Department of Agriculture crisp rice cereal 
     printed with a message encouraging users to extend their 
     other meals with cereal.
       The flow of food was not coming close to keeping pace with 
     rising demand, as many as 1,500 clients a month, Ms. DiNapoli 
     said. So last spring, instead of letting people return every 
     two weeks, the agency began limiting them to one visit a 
     month, she said. ``We just don't have the food.''
                                  ____


                [From the New York Times, Feb. 25, 1999]

              Plunge in Use of Food Stamps Causes Concern

                         (By Andrew C. Revkin)

       The nation's food stamp rolls have dropped by one-third in 
     four years, leading to a growing concern that the decline is 
     caused partly by needy people's hesitance to apply for 
     benefits.
       A vibrant economy is clearly a major reason that the number 
     of people using food stamps fell to fewer than 19 million 
     last November, from nearly 28 million people four years 
     earlier. But some in Congress, at the Agriculture Department, 
     which administer the food stamp program, and at private 
     poverty groups say they feel that a significant number of 
     people are not seeking help even though they still lack food 
     and are eligible.
       Some officials say they believe that stringent rules 
     intended to put welfare recipients to work and reduce the 
     welfare rolls may have also discourage people from seeking 
     food stamps.
       Some states and cities seeking to cut welfare rolls 
     aggressively, for example, require applicants to search a 
     month or more for a job before they can get benefits of any 
     kind. Often, official say, people in need of emergency food 
     aid simply walk out the door.
       ``The goal was to get people off welfare programs, but 
     people may have failed to understand that the food stamp 
     program is not a welfare program,'' said Shirley R. Watkins, 
     the Under Secretary of Agriculture for food, nutrition and 
     consumer service. ``It's nutritional assistance.''
       In other cases, Ms. Watkins and other officials say, it may 
     simply be the rising stigma surrounding public aid of all 
     sorts that is keeping people from applying for food aid, the 
     officials say.
       The notion that too many people have abandoned food stamps 
     has caused a flurry of activity at the Agriculture 
     Department.
       The department recently commissioned a study to understand 
     a simultaneous rise in the demand on private food charities 
     like church-basement food pantries and soup kitchens. The 
     goal is to determine if some of these charity seekers are 
     asking for handouts at private charities because they have 
     lost access to public food aid, agriculture officials said.
       Obtaining food stamps requires a simple showing of 
     financial need, unlike other Federal benefits with more 
     stringent regulations and requirements.

[[Page 5014]]

       Medicaid has similar broad eligibility, and it too has 
     recorded a similar unexplained drop in its rolls. Some 
     officials have said that while this drop, too, can be 
     attributed partly to the economy, some may also be the result 
     of recipients believing, inaccurately, that once they are 
     removed from welfare rolls, they are also ineligible for 
     Medicaid.
       Ms. Watkins said there were indications from states like 
     Wisconsin that some people leaving welfare for low-wage work 
     are not continuing to seek food stamps that could help them 
     make it through the month.
       Her misgivings are shared by some members of Congress from 
     both sides of the aisle.
       It is becoming apparent that the welfare reforms of 1996 
     did not anticipate how tightly access to food stamps was 
     linked to access to welfare, said Representative Nancy L. 
     Johnson, Republican of Connecticut and chairwoman of the 
     House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources.
       ``We do think there's a problem here,'' Mrs. Johnson said. 
     ``We need to see why state systems don't seem to capture the 
     food-stamp eligible population very well.
       ``When you make a big change in one system it's going to 
     have ramifications for other systems,'' Mrs. Johnson said. 
     ``Some are positive. If people aren't getting food stamps 
     because they're making more money, that's a good thing.''
       She said her committee was planning to hold hearings on the 
     matter this year.
       So far analysts have been able to gauge only roughly how 
     many eligible people have left the food stamp program even 
     though they need the aid. Last year, for example, the 
     Congressional Budget Office calculated that 2.9 million such 
     people left the food stamp rolls from 1994 to 1997. The 
     budget office report, a projection of economic conditions 
     through 2008, proposed that the rising stigma and barriers 
     surrounding welfare offices could be driving eligible people 
     away.
       Whatever the reasons, no one disputes how drastically the 
     program has shrunk, both in the number of people enrolled and 
     in the cost of providing the aid. Since 1994, the cost of the 
     food stamp program has fallen to $18.9 billion from $24.5 
     billion, according to the Agriculture Department.
       But some conservative poverty analysts say the drop in food 
     stamp rolls does not indicate a problem. Robert Rector, who 
     studies welfare for the Heritage Foundation, a private group 
     in Washington, said the drop was simply a recovery from a 
     period through the early 1990's when access to food stamps 
     and other assistance became too easy.
       ``In the late 80's and early 90's you had this notion of 
     one-stop shopping, getting people on as many benefits as you 
     could,'' Mr. Rector said.``A lot of the decline now is 
     hyped.''
       He said that Congress would do well to make food stamps 
     less readily available, by instituting work requirements and 
     other rules similar to those already imposed on other forms 
     of assistance.
       But Agriculture Department officials are pushing the states 
     to be sure their welfare offices are in line with Federal 
     rules, which require prompt processing of food stamp 
     applications.
       On Jan. 29, the administrator of the food stamp program, 
     Samuel Chambers Jr., sent a letter to the commissioners of 
     welfare and food stamp program in every state urging them to 
     review their policies to make sure they do not violate 
     Federal law.
       Federal officials had been particularly concerned with the 
     situation in New York City, where newly revamped welfare 
     offices, now called job centers, were delaying food stamp 
     applications and often directing applicants to private food 
     pantries instead.
       After a Federal judge last month ruled that the city food 
     stamp process violated Federal law, the city promised to 
     change its practices.
       In recent days, the city made another, unrelated policy 
     change that city officials say will trim several thousand 
     people from food stamp rolls. Under the 1996 package of 
     Federal welfare changes, single able-bodied adults can be cut 
     off from food stamps after three months if they do not work 
     at least 20 hours a week or participate in a workfare 
     program.
       Counties can seek waivers to the work requirement if they 
     have high unemployment rates, and for two years the counties 
     in New York City had all sought the waivers, preserving the 
     food aid.
       This year, though, the city has chosen not to seek the 
     waivers, so that city residents who are single and able to 
     work must find work or lose their food stamps, said Deborah 
     Sproles, a spokeswoman for the city Human Resources 
     Administration.
       Yesterday, private groups focused on poverty issues 
     criticized the city's decision, saying it could put as many 
     as 25,000 people at risk of hunger. But, Ms. Sproles said, 
     ``this is part of the city's overall effort to start helping 
     people gain self reliance.''

                          ____________________