Dive Brief:

• The U.S. Department of Agriculture is promoting stricter rules for retailers accepting benefits from the country’s $74 billion Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, the Wall Street Journal reports.

• In one of the biggest changes in the program’s 52 years, the agency is pushing to require a broader nutritional offering from retailers that includes more proteins and vegetables and fewer hot meals. Wal-Mart Stores’ wide-ranging grocery offerings likely already comply, but such rules could hit smaller retailers like convenient stores.

• Retailers that together have some 195,000 such smaller stores would be required to supplement their inventory with 168 items that are generally less profitable and more prone to issues like spoilage, according to the report.

Dive Insight:

While grocery store chains and Wal-Mart would be unfazed by the proposed changes, small stores say they can’t handle them.

“Unlike corporate grocery stores, or big-box stores like Wal-Mart that literally have acres of space under one roof, our stores are each around 2400 sq. ft. in total,” Dirk Cooper, president of Missoula, MT-based Noon’s Food Stores, wrote to the USDA, according to the Journal.

Others, like Al Patel, a manager at a Snappy Convenience Store in Chicago, say that while it's true that many SNAP recipients use their benefits to buy unhealthy foods like snacks and soda, previous attempts to sell healthier items left those goods on shelves.

SNAP monies account for an average 5.8% of sales at participating stores, according to a poll of 6,500 retail locations by the Food Marketing Institute cited by the Journal. 

Part of the proposal includes more than doubling the varieties of meats, dairy products, breads, fruits and vegetables that SNAP retailers must offer, requiring at least six of each. The pressure is mostly on the retailers to pare down prepared meals because they wouldn’t count toward such minimums, but could still be bought with SNAP benefits.

Retailers also couldn’t accept SNAP if they get more than 15% of sales from hot food, including if there’s a fast-food restaurant under the same roof. It's an attempt, according to the USDA, to ensure that restaurants aren’t privy to the SNAP program, which aims to help lower-income Americans buy groceries. Alternatives like shrimp, lamb or tofu would also meet the requirement, but the smaller retailers say those expensive items aren’t sought by their customers.

Nutrition and health advocates like the American Cancer Society support this proposal, but say the new requirements should be implemented slowly in order to protect smaller retailers, according to the Journal.

Congress is likely to take the side of retailers protesting the agency’s move, the Journal suggests. But there are also those in Congress that rail against the benefits being used for junk food or liquor, which Kevin Concannon, USDA undersecretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, also told the Journal is a problem the new rules aim to correct.