Following the announcement of the President's program of voluntary wage and price standards in October 1978, a food price monitoring program was established in the Economics, Statistics, and Cooperatives Service (ESCS) of USDA in cooperation with the Council on Wage and Price Stability (CWPS). The responsibilities of the food price monitoring effort initially included (1) the monitoring of price changes at various levels in the food system (2) the identification of significant movements in food prices, and (3) the development of policy alternatives to reduce inflation in the food sector of the economy. Since October, these functions have been expanded and now include margins monitoring.