SNAP-P: If rotisserie chicken, why not pet food?

When I spoke with Kent McClure, DVM, JD, assistant executive vice president and chief advocacy officer of the American Veterinary Medicine Association, in 2025, I asked what it took to get new legislation onto the congressional floor. He said the first questions legislators would ask would be, “What is it going to cost, and who is going to pay for it?” Considered an Access to Care initiative, SNAP-P would allow Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients to use part of their monthly household allotment for pet food, a change not allowed under the current program. Typically, a household of 4 receives around $744 for food purchases, whereas a single-person household receives around $188 per month.¹

There are approximately 44 million SNAP recipients, comprising 22 million households.¹ Conservatively, these households have at least 11 million pets, which typically each require about $40 per month of pet food, resulting in a potential net impact of $4.4 billion annual benefit to pet owners receiving SNAP benefits.² Currently, many pet owners receiving SNAP benefits are feeding their pets “people food,” which often results in a substandard nutritional balance that could lead to serious disease. The beauty of SNAP-P lies in its simplicity of implementation. It would require a simple congressional act to allow SNAP benefits to include food for pets, according to information provided by the USDA.³ It would be at the pet owners’ discretion on how much of their allocation they want to use for pet food. A similar bill, the Hot Rotisserie Chicken Act, was recently passed by the US Congress, allowing SNAP recipients to purchase this product with their SNAP benefits.⁴

Interestingly, SNAP-P is a One Health initiative because it supports the hypothesis that many pet owners will feed their pets before themselves, as described in the book My Dog Always Eats First by sociologist Leslie Irvine, PhD, MA.⁵ The US Department of Agriculture tracking system will confirm to what extent this premise is supported. How rare it is that something so simple can provide such bountiful benefit at so little cost. I have worked with the office of Sen Michael Bennet (D, Colorado) on this idea with little success. Programs to benefit pets and pet owners are far down on the list of priorities for congressional action. As veterinarians, we can be advocates for good ideas that improve the lives of people and pets.

References

1. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). USDA Food and Nutrition Administration. Updated March 12, 2026. Accessed August 6, 2026. https://www.fna.usda.gov/snap/supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program
2. Average annual expenditure on dogs and cats in the United States as of 2020, by category (in US dollars). Statista. June 2020. Accessed August 6, 2026. https://www.statista.com/statistics/250851/basic-annual-expenses-for-dog-and-cat-owners-in-the-us/
3. What Can SNAP Buy? USDA Food and Nutrition Administration. Updated June 4, 2025. Accessed August 6, 2026. https://www.fna.usda.gov/snap/eligible-food-items
4. Hot Rotisserie Chicken Act, S 4367, 119th Cong (2026). Accessed August 6, 2026. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/4367/text
5. Irvine L. My Dog Always Eats First: Homeless People and Their Animals. Lynne Rienner Publishers; 2013.