BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 1513
Page 1
Date of Hearing: April 10, 2012
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON HEALTH
William W. Monning, Chair
AB 1513 (Allen) - As Amended: March 26, 2012
SUBJECT : Retail food facilities: playground sanitation.
SUMMARY : Revises the California Retail Food Code (CRFC), which
governs all aspects of retail food safety and sanitation in
California, to include sanitation and safety requirements for
indoor and outdoor playgrounds on the premises of retail food
facilities. Specifically, this bill :
1)Clarifies that the existing requirement in the CRFC for all
premises of a food facility to be kept clean, fully operative,
and in good repair applies to indoor and outdoor playgrounds.
2)Requires a playground on the premises of a retail food
facility to meet the same standard of cleanliness that exists
for all other areas of the facility, except food handling and
preparation areas, pursuant to existing law in 1) above.
3)Subjects a retail food facility with a playground to all of
the following requirements:
a) Develop a plan to ensure that indoor playground areas
are kept clean and free of hazardous conditions, including,
but not limited to, cracked or broken playground
structures;
b) Display, or furnish upon request, the retail food
facility's playground maintenance policy and dates on which
the playground was last inspected and cleaned; and,
c) Prohibit customers from taking food directly on
playground structures, including climbing structures and
slides, except that food may be taken to and consumed
within rest or observation areas in or near the playground
area.
4)Defines "playground," for purposes of this bill, to mean an
improved area designed, equipped, and set aside for children's
play that is not intended for use as an athletic playing field
or athletic court, and includes any playground equipment, fall
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zones, surface materials, access ramps, and all areas within
and including the designated enclosure and barriers.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Establishes the CRFC and makes local environmental health
departments primarily responsible for enforcement through
local food safety inspection programs.
2)Defines, with specified exceptions, a retail food facility as
an operation that stores, prepares, packages, serves, vends,
or otherwise provides food for human consumption at the retail
level.
3)Requires all premises of a food facility to be kept clean,
fully operative, and in good repair and defines "premises" to
mean the food facility, its contents, and the contiguous land
or property and its facilities and contents that are under the
control of the owner/permit holder.
4)Defines "playground" to mean an improved outdoor area
designed, equipped, and set aside for children's play that is
not intended for use as an athletic playing field or athletic
court, and includes any playground equipment, fall zones,
surface materials, access ramps, and all areas within and
including the designated enclosure and barriers.
5)Requires all new public playgrounds, and the replacement of
equipment or modification of components inside existing
playgrounds, to conform to the playground-related standards
set forth by the American Society for Testing and Materials
(ASTM) and the playground-related guidelines set forth by the
United States Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).
6)Requires a certified playground safety inspector to provide an
initial inspection of playgrounds either operated by public
agencies or operated by any entity where the playground is
open to the public.
FISCAL EFFECT : This bill has not yet been analyzed by a fiscal
committee.
COMMENTS :
1)PURPOSE OF THIS BILL . The author states that indoor
playgrounds offered by restaurants can pose unique challenges
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for cleanliness and safety due to their close proximity to
food. The author maintains that current law governing food
safety and sanitation, the CRFC, lacks clarity with respect to
ensuring that playgrounds that are a part of food
establishments are sufficiently clean and safe for use by
California's children. According to the author, this bill is
intended to bring more specificity to state and local
regulation of the nonfood areas in food facilities by
clarifying that indoor and outdoor playgrounds are to be
treated as part of a food facility's premises that must be
kept clean, fully operative, and in good repair; and,
requiring a food facility with an indoor playground to develop
a plan to keep the playground areas clean and free of hazards
to children, including cracked or broken play structures.
2)BACKGROUND . According to the author, a group called Kids Play
Safe (KPS) was founded by two mothers, one of whom is a child
development professor and the other a microbiologist, to raise
awareness of the potential health and safety risks that indoor
play areas in restaurants pose to children. The author notes
that these women have visited dozens of restaurants with
playgrounds in 11 states, including California, in recent
months to test them for cleanliness. The author states that
their visits and the results from lab analyses of samples they
collected have revealed the widespread presence of an array of
pathogens, from coliform (fecal) bacteria to staphylococcus,
at levels that indicate these playgrounds are not disinfected
as frequently as necessary.
The founders of KPS also report that they have identified
maintenance problems with these structures including broken
second-story windows, cracks in slides and tubes, torn
netting, missing bolts and screws, and graffiti. They also
note that they have received hundreds of stories from parents
describing their children's illnesses and injuries that have
occurred as a result of their experiences in these play areas.
KPS states on its Website that there are currently no
regulations at the state or the federal level that require
food establishments with indoor playgrounds to keep them clean
or safe, and, without regulatory incentive, most facilities
either do not have proper corporate cleaning and maintenance
procedures or they are not being enforced. Moderate estimates
indicate that there are more than 15,000 of these facilities
in operation nationwide, each with an average of 50 children
per day at play.
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3)CURRENT FOOD INDUSTRY PROTOCOLS . The California Restaurant
Association (CRA) states that restaurant playgrounds must be
cleaned and maintained in accordance with the cleaning
standards in a facility's operations manual. These standards
include procedures for stringent sanitizing that follow the
manufacturer's recommendations for daily, weekly, and monthly
cleaning. Some restaurant playgrounds are also required to be
cleaned by a professional cleaning service on a quarterly
basis. Additionally, the NRA notes that some food facilities
provide step by step cleaning instruction manuals with video
training in each of their locations and install hand sanitizer
stations for customers and employees to use.
4)CRFC . According to the California Retail Food Safety
Coalition, a broad-based coalition of federal, state, and
local regulators and the retail food industry, the CRFC is
modeled after the federal Model Food Code, developed by the
federal Food and Drug Administration and updated every two
years. Local environmental health departments have primacy in
the enforcement of the CRFC and focus their food facility
inspections on minimizing food-borne illness risk factors and
maximizing public health interventions. According to the
federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),
food-borne illness risk factors are food from unsafe sources;
inadequate cooking; improper holding temperatures;
contaminated equipment; and, poor personal hygiene. Public
health interventions identified by CDC include demonstration
of knowledge; employee health; time and temperature control;
proper hand washing methods; and, consumer advisories.
5)NATIONAL PLAYGROUND GUIDELINES . The ASTM is a non-profit
international organization that provides a forum for the
development and publication of voluntary consensus standards
for materials, products, systems, and services. ASTM
standards are developed by technical committees and used by
individuals, companies, and agencies. Manufacturers of
playground equipment use ASTM guidelines to make the equipment
and write specifications for installations. ASTM Standards
F1487, F1292, and F1951 pertain to playground safety. F1487
provides comprehensive safety and performance specifications
for various types of public playground equipment. F1292
establishes minimum impact attenuation requirements for
surface systems such as wood chips or rubber mats that are
used under and around playground equipment from which a person
may fall. F1951 provides specifications for accessibility of
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surface systems that are under and around playgrounds.
The CPSC Handbook is also considered a national guideline. The
Handbook provides safety information for playground equipment
and addresses such issues as the potential for falls from and
impact with equipment; the need for protective surfacing under
and around equipment; openings with the potential for head
entrapment; the scale of equipment and other design features
related to user age; layout of equipment on a playground;
installation and maintenance procedures; and, general hazards
presented by protrusions, sharp edges, and pinch points. Over
time, the Handbook has become increasingly consistent with
ASTM guidelines. The guidelines from ASTM and the CPSC
Handbook cover outdoor playgrounds that are open to the public
and commonly found in parks. As a result, current state law
defining a playground as an improved outdoor area for
children's play incorporates the requirements of these
guidelines.
6)PRIOR LEGISLATION . AB 1144 (Harman), Chapter 470, Statutes of
2006, defines a playground as an improved outdoor space set
aside for children's play and requires operators of
playgrounds open to the public to meet playground-related
standards and guidelines set forth by the ASTM and the CPSC
when opening a new playground or updating or modifying an
existing playground.
7)SUPPORT . The Consumer Federation of California writes in
support that adding indoor and outdoor food facility
playgrounds to current law requiring the premises to be kept
clean, fully operative, and in good repair will ensure that
these playgrounds are safe for use and protect children from
the health and safety risks associated with their wear and
tear.
8)POLICY COMMENTS .
a) Implementation issue . This bill requires a food
facility with a playground to prohibit customers from
taking food or eating on a playground structure, but does
not specify how a food facility will achieve compliance
with this provision. The author may wish to address to
what extent this prohibition will be implemented through
the posting of signage or some other means.
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b) Definition of playground in state law . This bill
creates a new definition of playground for purposes of
enforcement in food facilities governed by the CRFC.
Should the current definition in the Health and Safety Code
be revised in order to make existing requirements governing
playground maintenance applicable to all types of
playgrounds, including indoor play areas in retail food
facilities?
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
Consumer Federation of California
Opposition
None on file.
Analysis Prepared by : Cassie Royce / HEALTH / (916) 319-2097