Why isn there any cheese on the available food products list?
California has not received dairy products from the USDA in many years. The EFAP was originally intended to help USDA maintain its product price support programs by distributing surplus food items to the needy. Cheese was a commodity that the USDA provided in the past when significant dairy surpluses threatened to ruin the market. To keep dairy prices stable, the USDA obtained the excess dairy production and turned it into items like nonfat dry milk, cheese and butter. Since there is no longer a dairy surplus, the EFAP rarely receives any dairy items and has not received any in years. • How much food is available? The EFAP was originally designed as a supplementary food program intended to augment the purchased food items of households. Historically, the EFAP has received surplus food resulting from over-production in addition to purchased food designed to round out the USDA’s overall offering of products. As a result, the amount of food that California has received has varied dependin
