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Food-Related Services: Opportunities Exist to Recover Costs by Charging Beneficiaries

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Report Type Reports and Testimonies
Report Date March 20, 1997
Report No. RCED-97-57
Subject
Summary:

The federal government spent nearly $1.6 billion in fiscal year 1995 to provide food-related services, such as testing, grading, and approving agricultural commodities and products. Although the government recovered about $400 million of this expenditures through user fees, GAO has identified more than $700 million in additional fees that could have been assessed. In some cases, the persons or companies benefitting from these services paid user fees for all of part of the cost of providing the service. In other cases, no user fees were charged. This report identifies opportunities to increase the share of funding by beneficiaries for food-related services now provided by the federal government. GAO discusses (1) the types of food-related services provided by federal agencies; (2) the extent to which beneficiaries now pay for these services through user fees; and (3) potential opportunities to recover more of the service costs through user fees, as well as arguments for and against doing so.

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