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Only half of people eligible for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) receive benefits from it, a new United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) report has found. The report, released Friday, said that despite 12.1 million Americans being eligible for the program in 2021, only 6.2 million received benefits, or 51 percent. (Suter, 11/3)

Republican Speaker Mike Johnson, more so than previous Speaker Kevin McCarthy, is a proponent of more hard-line GOP efforts to overhaul the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the country’s largest anti-hunger program that serves 41 million low-income Americans. As a senior member of the conservative-leaning Republican Study Committee, Johnson backed proposals to roll back food aid expansions under Biden and block states from exempting some work requirements for SNAP, formerly known as food stamps. In 2018, Johnson referred to SNAP as “our nation’s most broken and bloated welfare program.” (Hill, 11/2)

Treasure Dowell has called Missouri’s social services department three times a day for nearly a month and has yet to speak to a human being. Sometimes she is automatically disconnected hours before the call center closes because it has reached capacity for the day. Other times she waits hours, her phone on speaker atop the kitchen counter, playing the hold music and occasional queue updates, while she watches her kids, only for the line to disconnect. ... An in-person or phone interview is required to enroll or be re-certified in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. (Bates, 11/3)

The US Food and Drug Administration has proposed revoking its regulation authorizing the nationwide use of brominated vegetable oil, or BVO, as an additive in food. The FDA’s decision comes after California banned the ingredient in October by passing the California Food Safety Act, the first state law in the United States to ban brominated vegetable oil. The additive is already banned in Europe and Japan. (Rogers, 11/2)

A federal appeals court on Thursday is tossing the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ban on a pesticide that has been linked to brain damage in children. The decision from the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals to send the rule back to the agency does not preclude the agency from reinstating the ban in the future. But it said the EPA needs to give greater consideration to whether there are cases where the pesticide, called chlorpyrifos, could be used safely. Chlorpyrifos has been used as an insecticide, protecting crops like soybeans, broccoli, cauliflower and fruit trees. (Frazin, 11/2)

Cambridge-based Biobot Analytics conducts sewage tests in hundreds of communities nationwide to track the spread of COVID and other diseases. But the company found itself out in the cold in September after the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave its waste-water testing contract to Verily Life Sciences, a medical data subsidiary of tech giant Alphabet, the parent company of Google. (Bray, 11/2)

The COVID-19 pandemic caused Americans collective trauma, which predisposes to mental illness and chronic illnesses, according to a new online survey from the American Psychological Association (APA).The Harris Poll surveyed 3,185 US adults nationwide for the Stress in America 2023 report from August 4 to 26. (Van Beusekom, 11/2)