BILL ANALYSIS �
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THIRD READING
Bill No: AB 2130
Author: Pan (D) and Gatto (D), et al.
Amended: 5/1/14 in Assembly
Vote: 27 - Urgency
SENATE HEALTH COMMITTEE : 9-0, 6/11/14
AYES: Hernandez, Morrell, Beall, De Le�n, DeSaulnier, Evans,
Monning, Nielsen, Wolk
SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE : Senate Rule 28.8
ASSEMBLY FLOOR : 73-0, 5/8/14 - See last page for vote
SUBJECT : Retail food safety
SOURCE : Author
DIGEST : This bill repeals provisions of law enacted in 2013
that prohibits retail food employees from contacting exposed
ready-to-eat foods with their bare hands, and replaces these
provisions with the law that existed prior to the enactment of
these provisions, which requires food employees to minimize bare
hand contact with ready-to-eat foods.
ANALYSIS :
Existing law:
1.Establishes the California Retail Food Code (CRFC) to regulate
retail food safety, which is enforced by local environmental
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health officers.
2.Prohibits food employees from contacting exposed, ready-to-eat
food with their bare hands, and requires these employees to
use suitable utensils, including deli tissue, spatulas, tongs,
single-use gloves, or dispensing equipment.
3.Defines "ready-to-eat food" as food that is in a form that is
edible without additional preparation to achieve food safety.
4.Permits food employees not serving a highly susceptible
population to contact exposed, ready-to-eat food with their
bare hands if specified requirements are met.
5.Requires food handlers to obtain a food handler card every
three years from an accredited provider, as specified.
Requires food handler cards to be issued only upon successful
completion of a training course that meets specified
requirements.
This bill:
1.Repeals provisions of law that prohibit food employees in
retail food facilities from contacting exposed, ready-to-eat
food with their bare hands, and requires these employees to
use suitable utensils, including deli tissue, spatulas, tongs,
single-use gloves, or dispensing equipment, including
provisions that permitted food employees to contact
ready-to-eat food under specified circumstances.
2.Requires food employees to minimize bare hand and arm contact
with non-prepackaged food that is in a ready-to-eat form.
3.Requires food employees to use utensils, including scoops,
forks, tongs, paper wrappers, gloves, or other implements, to
assemble ready-to-eat food or to place ready-to-eat food on
tableware or in other containers, but permits food employees
to assemble or place on tableware or in other containers
ready-to-eat food in an approved food preparation area without
using utensils if hands are cleaned in accordance with
specified required procedures.
4.Requires food that has been served to the consumer and then
wrapped or prepackaged at the direction of the consumer to be
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handled only with utensils, which are required to be properly
sanitized before reuse.
5.Contains an urgency clause requiring it to go into immediate
effect in order to protect public health and safety by
developing better food safety procedures for ready-to-eat food
and by avoiding confusion among local health agencies and
small businesses at the earliest time possible.
Background
Foodborne illness. According to the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC), each year roughly one in six Americans
gets sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 people die of
foodborne diseases. The spread of germs from the hands of food
workers to food is an important cause of foodborne illness
outbreaks in restaurants. One of the most important steps to
preventing transmission of these pathogens is ensuring that food
employees do no work when they are ill. Proper hand washing
reduces the spread of fecal-oral pathogens from the hands of a
food employee to foods, and effective hand washing includes
scrubbing, rinsing, and complete drying of hands. However, the
CDC notes that hand washing alone might not always successfully
remove pathogens from heavily contaminated hands, and infected
food employees may not always be identified and removed from
food preparation activities, which leads to the recommendations
to minimize or prohibit bare hand contact of ready-to-eat foods.
Minimizing vs. prohibiting bare hand contact . Although the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Model Food Code includes a
prohibition on food workers touching ready-to-eat foods with
bare hands, the U.S. FDA later requested that the National
Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods
(NACMCF), within the United States Department of Agriculture's
Food Safety and Inspection Service, examine the scientific data
on the risk associated with this practice. Among the specific
questions the US FDA posed to NACMCF was: if it is possible to
interrupt transmission of foodborne illnesses via bare hand
contact, which of the following interventions will provide
maximum public health benefit: (1) prohibition against ill or
infected workers from preparing food; (2) hand washing/personal
sanitation regimens; or (3) a blanket prohibition against bare
hand contact with ready-to-eat foods? The NACMCF issued
recommendations in 1999, concluding that "minimizing bare hand
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contact with ready-to-eat food provides an additional means or
interrupting disease transmission, when used in combination with
the exclusion/restriction of ill food workers and proper hand
washing. However, most members of the Committee deemed the
available scientific data insufficient to support a blanket
prohibition of bare hand contact with ready-to-eat foods."
Gloves may reduce hand washing frequency . In a study published
in 2007, in the Journal of Food Protection, entitled "Factors
Related to Food Worker Hand Hygiene Practices" researchers
collected observational data on 321 food workers and their hand
washing practices. Results indicated that workers only made an
attempt at washing their hands (ran their hands under water) 32%
of the time when hand washing would be recommended, and only
appropriately washed their hands (using soap and drying their
hands) 27% of the time washing was recommended. Interestingly,
however, the attempted and appropriate hand washing rates were
significantly lower when gloves were worn (18% and 16 %,
respectively) than when gloves were not worn (37% and 30%). The
authors of this study stated that these findings "suggest that
the hand washing practices of food workers need to be improved,
glove use may reduce hand washing, and restaurants should
consider reorganizing their food preparation activities to
reduce the frequency with which hand washing is needed."
Comments
According to the author, the Legislature passed a bill, AB 1252
(Committee on Health, Chapter 556, Statutes of 2013) that made
many, mostly minor, changes to the CRFC. Like all Assembly
Health Committee-authored bills, AB 1252 was intended to be a
consensus bill. It had no opposition, and it was agreed that if
opposition to any of the bill's provisions arose at any point in
the process, those provisions would be immediately removed from
the bill. Since the enactment of AB 1252 on January 1, 2014,
many small restaurants and bars have raised serious concerns
about a provision in the new law that prohibits bare hand
contact with ready-to-eat food. Given these businesses'
concerns about the cost and public health value of this
prohibition, it is clear that the Committee bill process was not
appropriate for this provision, which should have been fully
vetted and debated before being enacted. Environmental health
directors statewide have agreed to a "soft roll-out," where they
are not penalizing facilities for failure to comply with the
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bare hand contact prohibition until July 1, 2014. Therefore, it
is important for this bill, which contains an urgency clause, to
be enacted before that date.
Prior Legislation
AB 1252 (Committee on Health) made numerous technical,
clarifying, and non-controversial changes to the CRFC, and
prohibits bare hand contact with ready-to-eat food without prior
authorization from the local environmental health department.
SB 602 (Padilla, Chapter 309, Statutes of 2010) requires a food
handler to obtain a food handler card within 30 days after
employment at a food facility by successfully completing a
training course, and every three years thereafter.
SB 241 (George Runner, Chapter 571, Statutes of 2009) enacted a
number of clean-up changes to the CRFC and provided for the
regulation of temporary and mobile food facilities under the
CRFC.
SB 744 (George Runner, Chapter 96, Statutes of 2007) enacted
numerous technical, clarifying, and non-substantive changes to
the CRFC.
SB 144 (George Runner, Chapter 23, Statutes of 2006) repealed
and reenacted the California Uniform Retail Food Facilities Law
as the CRFC.
FISCAL EFFECT : Appropriation: No Fiscal Com.: Yes
Local: Yes
SUPPORT : (Verified 6/20/14)
Ambrosia Catering and Cafes, Sacramento
American Bao Bar, San Francisco
Bartavelle Coffee & Wine Bar, Berkeley
Berkeley Organization for Animal Advocacy
Bits, Bites, and Boxes, Loomis
Caffe 817, Oakland
Californians Against Waste
Citizen Hotel, Sacramento
Coffee, Tea, and Tulips, Mission Viejo
Culinary Edge, San Francisco
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de Vere's Irish Pub, Sacramento
Der Biergarten, Sacramento
Dish It Up Catering and Diggers Deli, Vacaville
Dos Coyotes Border Caf�
Eden Vale Inn, Placerville
Ella Dining Room and Bar, Sacramento
Fox & Goose Public House, Sacramento
Freeport Bakery, Sacramento
Georges at the Cove, La Jolla
Golden Gate Restaurant Association
Grange Restaurant and Bar, Sacramento
Harlow's Restaurant and Night Club, Sacramento
Haven Gastropub, Orange & Pasadena
Jules Thin Crust, Oakland & Danville
Marrow, Oakland
Mikuni Restaurant Group
Mulvaney's B&L, Sacramento
Noe Valley Bakery and Bread Company, San Francisco
Paragary's Restaurant Group, Sacramento
Potato Shack Caf�, Encinitas
Provisions Market, Orange
Relish Culinary Adventures, Vacaville
Rice Paper Scissors, San Francisco
Rick's Tavern on Main, Santa Monica
River City Brewing Company, Sacramento
River City Saloon, Sacramento
Saucy Restaurant, Ukiah
Selland Family Restaurants, Sacramento
Selland's Market Cafe, Sacramento
Sous Beurre Kitchen, San Francisco
Taco Asylum, Costa Mesa
Venissimo Cheese, San Diego
ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT : A number of restaurants have written in
support of this bill, including Biba Restaurant, Der Biergarten,
de Vere's Irish Pub, Dos Coyotes Border Caf�, Ella Dining Room
and Bar, Fox & Goose Public House, Freeport Bakery, and others.
These restaurants state that the prohibition on bare hand
contact will require bars and restaurants to buy and discard
thousands of disposable gloves, imposing a significant financial
burden and environmental impact. Mikuni Restaurant Group states
that many professionals in their industry agree that cooks
wearing gloves tend not to change their gloves between tasks. In
addition, Mikuni states that for the sushi industry, gloves pose
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a significant physical risk due to the intricate knife work
involved in sushi. Mikuni states that gloves do have their
place in the kitchen, and they do wear them for many tasks, but
a blanket law requiring everyone to wear gloves for all
ready-to-eat foods does not provide their customers with a safer
product.
Californians Against Waste also supports this bill, stating that
because wearing gloves tends to give people a false sense of
cleanliness, restaurant employees may not wash hands prior to
gloves, increasing the risk of contamination. Californians
Against Waste also notes that when employees have to wear
single-use gloves at all times, it puts a strain on resources
and generates an unnecessary amount of waste in single-use
plastic gloves.
ASSEMBLY FLOOR : 73-0, 5/8/14
AYES: Achadjian, Alejo, Allen, Ammiano, Atkins, Bigelow, Bloom,
Bocanegra, Bonilla, Bonta, Bradford, Brown, Buchanan, Ian
Calderon, Campos, Chau, Ch�vez, Chesbro, Conway, Cooley,
Dababneh, Dahle, Daly, Dickinson, Donnelly, Fong, Fox,
Frazier, Beth Gaines, Garcia, Gatto, Gomez, Gonzalez, Gordon,
Grove, Hagman, Harkey, Roger Hern�ndez, Holden, Jones,
Jones-Sawyer, Levine, Linder, Logue, Lowenthal, Maienschein,
Medina, Melendez, Mullin, Muratsuchi, Nazarian, Nestande,
Olsen, Pan, Patterson, Perea, Quirk, Quirk-Silva, Rendon,
Ridley-Thomas, Rodriguez, Salas, Skinner, Stone, Ting, Wagner,
Waldron, Weber, Wieckowski, Wilk, Williams, Yamada, John A.
P�rez
NO VOTE RECORDED: Eggman, Gorell, Gray, Hall, Mansoor, V.
Manuel P�rez, Vacancy
JL:e 6/23/14 Senate Floor Analyses
SUPPORT/OPPOSITION: SEE ABOVE
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