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Food stamp for pets: The website of a nonprofit organization offering food stamps for Fido, Rover, or Mittens crashed Monday, but received 20,000 applications in a single day.
A dog is walked in Prospect Park in Brooklyn the morning after a massive snow storm on Feb. 9, 2013 in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
A nationwide nonprofit organization has set up a food stamps program for cash-strapped pet owners, with more than 20,000 applications on Monday alone, crashing the website.
Its founder, Mark Okon, on Tuesday responded to questions about whether low-income families should be forced to give up their pets. He specifically answered that if family can’t afford food for themselves, they should not have pets.
“Well if a mother or father loses their job, should they have to surrender their kids?” Okon told Fox News on Tuesday. “It’s the same thing.” He added, “If there are difficulties in the house and these pets need to be surrendered, these kids are going to be emotionally traumatized losing their best pet.”
He stressed that the program is not government funded.
“This is not a government program, we have not sought government funding, nor do we plan on accepting it should it be offered,” Okon said.
The program is able to operate based on “generosity of contributors and patrons,” while eliminating the “heart-wrenching decision by making sure these pet owners are given free monthly home delivery of all necessary food supplies to maintain the health and vitality of their pets,” a statement on the company’s website says.
Apparently, the demand has been so high that the program’s website has been down intermittently over the past several days. “There is a chance that if demand to access the site continues to increase at the current pace, we may crash again,” said a Facebook posting from the organization on Monday.
The approximately 46 million Americans currently on food stamps, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, is currently at an all-time high. In 2009, there were around 33 million people on the federal assistance program.
Currently, there is a three-week waiting period before applicants can get a response from the program.
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