(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 generally 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 add 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 the scope of 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 and investigate conditions, and authorizes the officer or agency to 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, is due to salmonella typhi or entamoeba histolytica, among other infectious agents.

This bill would remove entamoeba histolytica from the list of infectious agents causing an illness that 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 to be deemed in compliance with the California Retail Food Code pending replacement or renovation, except when the enforcement agency determines that the nonconforming structural conditions pose a public health hazard.

This bill would, for purposes of the above-described provision, switch limited service charitable feeding operation facilities to 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 designate an existing system or to create a new system. Existing law requires the system, at a minimum, to provide local health departments with 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 those modifications.

This bill would also authorize the department to implement the above-described items at any time and would require the department to collaborate with local health departments to determine those implementations.

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 Public Health Information Network Messaging Guide for Syndromic Surveillance released in April 2015, or any subsequent versions, under the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This bill would instead require that the data elements, standards, schedule, and instructions for data collection include any department-approved element or requirement.

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 is required by this act for a specified reason.