Washington, D.C., Sept. 24, 2025 – Today, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins announced the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) is proposing changes to strengthen the stocking requirements for retailers participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). These changes would protect the program, participants, and taxpayers by mitigating fraud, waste, and abuse and ensuring additional healthy food options for recipient families.

"Retailers participating in SNAP need to sell real food, plain and simple. Right now, the bar for stocking food as a SNAP retailer is far too low, allowing people to game the system and leaving vulnerable Americans without healthy food options. These common-sense changes are designed to minimize benefit trafficking and skimming, among other fraudulent activities, while making more nutritious foods available to families who rely on the program,” said Secretary Brooke Rollins. “This is another step forward in President Trump’s mission to Make America Healthy Again.”

Currently, SNAP retailers are required to stock three varieties of food in each of four staple food categories – dairy, protein, grain, and fruits and vegetables – 12 foods total. The proposed rule:

• Increases variety requirements to seven per staple food category, more than doubling the food choices available to SNAP participants.
• Closes loopholes that allow certain snack foods to count as staple foods, emphasizing the importance of healthy, whole food.
• Simplifies how foods are classified, making the standards easier for retailers to understand – and FNS to enforce.

This proposed rule is part of USDA’s broader commitment to ensuring federal nutrition programs operate with integrity and respect to the American taxpayer. Low stocking requirements make SNAP more vulnerable to fraud and abuse, permitting retailers that aren’t genuinely in the business of selling food to cash in on taxpayer-funded benefits. With nearly 266,000 retailers redeeming $96 billion in SNAP benefits per year, no amount of fraud will be tolerated.

The changes also support the Trump administration’s promise to turn the tide on chronic disease and Make America Healthy Again. USDA is actively reorienting SNAP towards better nutrition and emphasizing whole, healthy food for program participants. This includes approving 12 states to exclude certain unhealthy foods from purchase with SNAP benefits.

USDA welcomes comments on the proposed rule from interested parties and the public. The full text of the rule is available on the FNS website. Comments may be submitted Sept. 25 through Nov. 24, 2025, by visiting regulations.gov.

The 236-acre project will rise in Generation Park, a master-planned business complex near Beltway 8, about 10 miles east of George Bush Intercontinental Airport, according to Texas Comptroller records.

The plant is expected to generate 4,000 construction jobs and 615 permanent positions — including engineers, scientists, operations staff and lab technicians — the company said.

INVESTIGATIONS: Houston-based Empower Pharmacy’s drugs raised red flags for FDA and other states, but not Texas

The project could also put Houston at the center of the fast-growing weight loss industry, which has exploded in recent years with the advent of injectable GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy. Lilly hopes to eventually manufacture an oral GLP-1 drug called orforglipron, still pending regulatory approval, which would let patients take the weight-loss drug in pill form instead of injections.

“Our new Houston site will enhance Lilly’s ability to manufacture orforglipron at scale, and if approved, help fulfill the medicine’ potential as a metabolic health treatment for tens of millions of people worldwide who prefer the ease of a pill that can be taken without food or water restrictions,” said David A. Ricks, Lilly’s CEO, in a statement. “This significant U.S. investment and onshoring of our API (active pharmaceutical ingredient) production capabilities will ensure faster, more secure access to orforglipron and to other life-changing medicines of the future.”