A North Carolina seafood retailer and restaurant sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture after it withdrew authorization for the retailer to participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Forsyth Seafood Market and Grill, based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, filed the complaint in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina.
Forsyth Seafood has previously been authorized as part of the SNAP program since its inception in 1984, but USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) recently denied its authorization.
SNAP provides supplemental nutrition benefits to more than 35 million Americans and more than 1.4 million North Carolinians. More than 20 percent of households in Forsyth County participate in SNAP, according to Forsyth Seafood, and the business is located in an area with “significantly limited access to fresh seafood products,” the retailer said.
Forsyth Seafood sells “a wide variety of staple food and other SNAP-eligible items,” the retailer said, and a majority of its gross receipts are from the sale of SNAP-eligible food items.
In its response, FNS said Forsyth Seafood “is primarily a restaurant, because more than 50 percent of [its] total gross retail sales are from ‘heated foods’ and/or ‘prepared foods.’”
A separate FNS review found that Forsyth’s prepared food sales were more than 80 percent of its total sales, the complaint said.
However, the FNS document “contains no analysis of Forsyth Seafood’s submissions to FNS or how the Retailer Operations Division determined that its prepared food sales constituted more than 80 percent of its total sales,” Forsyth Seafood said.
The FNS review was based in part on a short site visit to the store conducted by an FNS contractor on 27 February, 2019.
“The FAD provides that “[o]n the day of the store visit, the evidence supported that the store is primarily a restaurant,” FNS wrote.
However, Forsyth Seafood’s retail market is not a restaurant and all “prepared foods” sold by Forsyth Seafood were intended to be consumed at home.
In fact, the entrance to Forsyth Seafood’s retail market is separate from the entrance to Forsyth Seafood’s café and the market does not share inventory with the cafe, according to the complaint.
Forsyth Seafood did not respond to a request for comment from SeafoodSource.
Photo courtesy of Jonathan Weiss/Shutterstock
