Official Summary Text
SB 1447, as introduced, Committee on Health.
Health omnibus.
(1) Existing law, the California Retail Food Code, establishes uniform health and sanitation standards for retail food facilities, and defines multiple terms used in those provisions, including egg, food additive, beverage, and catering operation. Existing law requires that frozen potentially hazardous food be thawed in specified ways. A person who violates any provision of the California Retail Food Code is guilty of a misdemeanor.
This bill would update the definition of catering operation to mean a permanent food facility approved for food preparation where food is served at a location other than its permitted location in specified circumstances. The bill would also additional include definitions for the terms egg product, intact meat, and mechanically tenderized.
The bill would
also require that reduced oxygen packaged fish bearing a label indicating it is to be kept frozen until time of use be completely removed from the packaging prior to thawing. By expanding an existing crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.
The bill would make additional technical changes to these provisions.
Existing law requires a local health officer or a local enforcement agency to notify the person in charge of the food facility, investigate conditions, and take appropriate action when a local health officer is notified of an illness that can be transmitted by food or an employee in a food facility. Existing law requires the owner or the food safety certified employee to require food employees to report to the person in charge if a food employee is diagnosed with an illness. Existing law specifies that illness, for purposes of those requirements, includes salmonella typhi and entamoeba histolytica,
among others.
This bill would remove entamoeba histolytica from the list of illnesses an owner or employee is required to report to the person in charge.
Existing law requires a person proposing to build or remodel a food facility to submit complete, easily readable plans drawn to scale, and specifications to the enforcement agency for review, and to receive plan approval before starting any new construction or remodeling of a facility for use as a retail food facility, including school food facilities. Existing law requires existing public and private school cafeterias, limited service charitable feeding operation facilities, and licensed health care facilities be deemed in compliance with the provisions pending replacement or renovation, except when the enforcement agency determines the nonconforming structural conditions pose a public health hazard.
This bill would change
limited service charitable feeding operation facilities to be existing nonprofit charitable feeding organization facilities whose food service is solely for providing charity.
(2) Existing law authorizes the State Department of Public Health to develop and administer a syndromic surveillance program and, subject to an appropriation, to either designate an existing system or to create a new system that would be required, at a minimum, to provide public health practitioners access to an electronic health system to rapidly collect, evaluate, share, and store syndromic surveillance data, as specified. Existing law authorizes the department to modify the list of data elements, standards, schedules, and instructions at any time, and requires the department to collaborate with local health departments to determine necessary modifications.
This bill would also authorize the department to implement the list at
any time and require the department to collaborate with local health departments to determine necessary implementations and modifications.
Existing law requires certain entities to submit the required data electronically to the syndromic surveillance system designated by the department in accordance with the schedule, standards, and requirements established by the department. Existing law provides that the data elements, standards, schedule, and instructions for data collection include any element or requirement adopted for use by the CDC’s Public Health Information Network Messaging Guide for Syndromic Surveillance released in April 2015.
This bill would instead require that the data elements, standards, schedule, and instructions for data collection include any department-approved element or requirement.
(3) Existing law, the Mello-Granlund Older
Californians Act, establishes the California Department of Aging in the California Health and Human Services Agency and sets forth its mission to provide leadership to the area agencies on aging in developing systems of home- and community-based services that maintain individuals in their own homes or least restrictive homelike environments. Existing law establishes the State Department of Public Health Office of AIDS, which is responsible for coordinating state programs, services, and activities relating to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), and AIDS-related conditions (ARC).
This bill would require the California Department of Aging and State Department of Public Health Office of AIDS to meet annually to collaborate on issues of mutual interest, including, but not limited to, supporting seniors with chronic care conditions and comorbidities and the impacts of HIV, AIDS, and sexually transmitted infections on the
aging population in California.
(4) The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement.
This bill would provide that no reimbursement shall be made pursuant to these statutory provisions for costs mandated by the state pursuant to this act, but would recognize that a local agency or school district may pursue any available remedies to seek reimbursement for these costs.