For Immediate Release: October 4, 2021

Media Contact: Michelle.Sherwood@sen.ca.gov

HURTADO RELEASES STATEMENT AFTER GOVERNOR SIGNS BILL CREATING FOOD AND AGRICULTURAL LABORATORY CERTIFICATION STANDARDS
 

SANGER, CA –Senator Melissa Hurtado (D-Sanger) today, released a statement after Governor Newsom signed her bill, Senate Bill 703:

“Food safety plays an important role not only in our food supply chain, but also to our health,” said Senator Hurtado. “By signing SB 703, California is further strengthening our food safety standards for poultry and livestock, which will improve food security, and provide further protections from harmful pathogens that could turn into the next pandemic or disease.”

“CCA applauds Governor Newsom for signing SB 703,” said Kirk Wilbur, Vice President of Government Affairs, California Cattlemen’s Association. By providing the California Department of Food and Agriculture the regulatory authority to ensure the quality, accuracy and reproducibility of veterinary tests for conditions like foot-and-mouth disease and bovine brucellosis, this legislation will ensure that California’s veterinary labs avoid diagnostic defects that could disrupt our cattle herds, food-supply chain and trade relations. CCA thanks Senator Hurtado for authoring SB 703 and CDFA for supporting the Senator’s efforts.”

As Vice Chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Senator Hurtado introduced Senate Bill 703--which ensures that all poultry and livestock labs who provide service specifically for animal diseases also provide equally reliable results by allowing the CDFA to create laboratory certification standards.

This legislative session, Senator Hurtado has authored Senate Bill 108—the Human Right to Food Act, would have declared it to be a state policy that all people have access to sufficient, healthy food. With this declaration, the bill would have required California’s governmental agencies to consider the human right to food as they create, amend or adopt regulations. Senate Bill 108 would have also required reporting on the current and future status of food, food production and food assistance.   

Senator Hurtado also authored Senate Bill 464, the Comida Para Todos (Food for All Act.) This bill will provide greater food security to low-income immigrant workers by expanding eligibility for state funded nutrition benefits to anyone ineligible for CalFresh due solely to their immigration status.

About Senator Melissa Hurtado

Senator Melissa Hurtado represents a new generation of Latina leaders as the youngest woman ever elected to the California State Senate and a product of immigrant parents. Senator Hurtado represents the 14th Senate District and focuses on rural community issues that often go unheard — access to clean air and water, food insecurity and poverty, inequities in environmental policies, agriculture and access to health care. In July 2020, she was appointed to the national Biden Latino Leadership Committee alongside former Labor Secretary and current Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis – the only two California Latinas on the Committee.

For more information, visit Senator Hurtado’s Website here or find her on Twitter at @Senator_Hurtado

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