The Arizona Center for Rural Health is offering free support for experienced (and less experienced) Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) providers to help them increase capacity to provide MAT services. Participation in the Arizona Center for Rural Health’s AzMAT Mentors Program is free and open to Arizona controlled substance prescribers.
If you’re interested or would like to learn more about our program, please visit their website: https://crh.arizona.edu/mentor
With the veto of HB2509 it appears that the cottage food program will stay where it is for at least another year. Unless there’s a Strike All bill that expands cottage foods that satisfactorily address the concerns of the Interim ADHS director and/or the Governor, it appears we’ll be in stasis for the program and the 15,000 persons registered in the Cottage Food program.
In the meantime, is there an administrative fix that could responsibly expand the list of foods that participants can prepare that wouldn’t need a statutory change?
The answer is yes – but it would require ADHS Interim Director Cunico to be more generous with the list of ingredients ADHS considers to be acceptable under the existing program. Here’s how Interim Director Cunico could do that if she were so inclined.
See the list of foods/ingredients ADHS allows in the current program
ADHS adopted the FDA Food Code 2017 to govern food production and sale in Arizona. That document defines potentially hazardous food that:
“… require time/temperature control for safety to limit pathogenic microorganism growth or toxin formation… including an animal food that is raw or heat-treated… that is not modified in a way so that they are unable to support pathogenic microorganism growth or toxin formation…”
Determining which ingredients and foods that meet that definition is both an art and science.
There are certain ingredients – shellfish for example – that are clearly potentially hazardous. Many other meats also potentially hazardous – but others the current ADHS cottage food program considers potentially hazardous should more appropriately be called theoretically hazardous. The bottom line is that the current listing of ingredients the department considers acceptable is unnecessarily restrictive and can be expanded without requiring a statutory change.
My point is that ADHS should collaborate with the University of Arizona Food Product and Safety Lab and others to build a more generous menu of ingredients and combination of ingredients they’ll allow in the existing cottage food program. Such a revised list would be unlikely to include tamales, but many other foods could and should qualify.
Whether ADHS Interim Director Cunico is willing to do so is unknown.
Last week President Biden signed an executive order directing federal agencies to use their existing statutory authority to make child and elder care cheaper and more accessible. The action doesn’t create new law and doesn’t have an appropriation, but it will eventually change the policies, procedures and leverage federal procurement contracts to make child and elder care more accessible.
If there’s no new law or money, how can the EO change things? Here’s how:
The Order tells federal agencies (e.g., HHS, USDA etc.) to find ways to require applicants seeking federal funds to expand access to childcare. This could be similar to the way the US Commerce Department told companies planning to apply for more than $150 million in CHIPS funding (under the $38B CHIPS and Science Act) that they need to provide a plan to provide childcare to their workers in order to qualify for that funding.
Another example is that the new order tells HHS to use existing authority to reduce childcare costs for families using the Child Care and Development Fund. They’ll likely change their federal regulations (via rulemaking) to reduce or eliminate childcare co-payments in the program. Currently, families contribute on a sliding fee scale (the maximum family copay is 7% of family income) but they can lower that.
Another part of the EO tells the Office of Personnel Management to help federal employees afford childcare. They’re supposed to review current childcare subsidies among federal employees and expand federal employee access to childcare services through federal childcare centers or contracted care providers.
There are limits to what executive orders can do – so this isn’t a watershed action by any means. There’s no guarantee that all these initiatives will actually happen, and the timeline for any of these changes remains uncertain. At least it’s something, though.
LOCATION: MARICOPA ASSOCIATIONS OF GOVERNMENTS SAGUARO ROOM, SECOND FLOOR, 302 N 1ST AVE #300, PHOENIX, AZ 85003
Age Friendly Arizona and Northern Arizona Council of Governments were selected to host a free statewide technology summit with the National Center for Applied Transit Technology (N-CATT). This summit aims to help healthcare and transportation providers in Arizona identify and support technology projects to improve access to healthcare.
In this first event, transportation and healthcare providers from across Arizona were presented with case studies from around the nation on how these two sectors worked together to improve healthcare access. The Arizona group then held a wide-ranging conversation about healthcare access in Arizona, the challenges faced by both transportation and healthcare providers, and current initiatives to address these challenges.
Throughout these conversations, two general themes were identified as building blocks for additional summit events.
There is a need for enhanced collaboration across multiple sectors across the state:
There is a great opportunity to pilot projects at the local or regional level and demonstrate replicable success at statewide level:
To build off of these themes we are inviting you to attend an in-person workshop on May 9 to dive deeper into the areas below (lunch and free parking will be provided):
PLEASE REGISTER HERE TO JOIN US IN EXPLORING THESE AREAS ON MAY 9, 2023.
The Arizona Department of Health Services is inviting members of the Arizona Emergency Medical Services and Trauma System community to provide comments on its draft trauma center rules. To view the rulemaking process, proposed rule changes and take the online survey, click here.
Issue Brief on 2021 State Policy Trends in Cottage Food & Home Kitchen Legislation
Abstract: The issue brief details trends across the 51 unique pieces of legislation introduced in 31 states and the District of Columbia that aimed to expand opportunities for cottage food producers and home cooks in 2021.
Trends include expanding the list of allowable foods produced at home, raising or lifting gross sales caps for home-produced goods, ensuring local governments allow home food production, and expanding sales and delivery venues for foods produced at home.
There is a wide variety of cottage food and home kitchen laws across the country. Despite this variety, the trend in new state legislation is quite clear. Whether allowing more categories of foods, raising sales caps, preempting local regulation, or expanding sales and delivery venues, states have been steadily broadening their cottage food and home kitchen allowances.
Growing markets for cottage foods and other home-produced foods has led to economic development and rising numbers of consumers and home cooks able to advocate for these laws. The beneficiaries of these laws are largely women, immigrants, and people of color.
The Relationship Between Cottage Food Laws & Business Outcomes:
A quantitative study of cottage food producers in the U.S.
Abstract: The increasing popularity of cottage foods in the United States requires that state laws regulating the industry be given careful consideration. This article discusses results from the first comprehensive survey of cottage food producers in the United States.
Linear and logistic regression analyses of survey responses from 775 cottage food producers and aspects of state cottage food laws suggest restrictive state laws may hinder entrepreneurship in rural communities.
These results suggest policymakers should consider reducing restrictions on the cottage food industry to promote small-business creation and growth, especially among women and rural populations.
Unless you’ve been on vacation, you’ve heard the drama surrounding House Bill 2509 – affectionately known as the “tamale bill”. It would have expanded the kinds of homemade foods Arizonans can sell and provided a way for families to help ends meet while building safeguards against foodborne illness.
HB2509 breezed through the legislature with bipartisan support, passing with a 45-11 majority in the House & 26-4 in the Senate. The bill was vetoed by the Governor last week.
This isn’t the first time there’s been drama about home-prepared food offered for sale in Arizona. The public policy question regarding who should be able to sell what kind of food to who goes back a couple decades.
Let’s walk through the policy history of cottage industry food products and discover why HB2509 would have been a good thing for public health.
Note: This blog post represents the opinion of Will Humble. The AzPHA Board of Directors voted to take no position on HB2509 on April 21, 2023.
If you’ve been to a farmers’ market in Arizona you’ve undoubtedly seen cottage food industry products being sold by happy vendors to smiling customers. You’ve seen all kinds of breads, sweets, fruits, jams and jellies and a lot more. It wasn’t always that way.
Prior to 2011, selling food not made in a licensed commercial kitchen was illegal and subject to citation by environmental health inspectors.
Everything changed in 2011 with the passage of a law that let people make baked and confectionery foods at home and sell them, as long as the food didn’t facilitate the growth of bacteria.
Some in the environmental health community (including the director of Maricopa County Environmental Services at the time) vigorously opposed the passage of Arizona’s cottage industry food law. Fortunately, the 2011-era Arizona Department of Health Services supported the bill. Their leadership recognized the beneficial public health impact the law would have by helping people make supplemental income. It passed with bipartisan support and was signed by Governor Brewer.
See: A.R.S. 36-136 (H)(4)(g) & A.R.S. 36-136 (H)(13) and Arizona Administrative Code R-9-8-118
Some in the environmental health world thought the sky would fall when the 2011 law passed. It did not. The program has been wildly successful and a big public health benefit. It helps families earn extra income and improves the social determinants of health.
Under the current law, only foods that don’t require time and temperature controls qualify for sale. They need to have a label stating the food preparer’s name and registration number, a listing of the ingredients, and the production date. Chefs need to complete a food handler training course and register with ADHS. Food preparers need to display their cottage industry food registration certificate at their point of sale.
How HB2509 Worked & Why I Think it Was Good
In a nutshell, HB2509 would have expanded the current cottage industry food law to include some foods that require time or temperature control for safety. The big public health bonus was that families would have been able to legally earn additional income to help ends meet by preparing a wider variety of foods.
While it’s true the bill would increase the number of folks selling potentially hazardous foods made in unlicensed kitchens, it would also build a number of safeguards into the system that don’t currently exist.
Drinks, fish & shellfish products wouldn’t qualify. Foods with meat or poultry could qualify if allowed under federal law. For example, for a recipe to include chicken, it would need to have been raised in accordance with the 1,000-bird federal exemption & inspected in accordance with federal standards. Meat can be in the recipe if it’s from an inspected source in accordance with federal regulations.
There are other safeguards built into House Bill 2509. Foods that have dairy, meat, or poultry must be sold directly by the food preparer in person or remotely (no middleman) and delivered to the consumer in person. Every food that needs time and temperature controls has to be maintained at the right temperature during transport, can’t be transported for more than 2 hours, and can’t be transported more than once.
Everything would need to be labeled with who made the food and where they made it so there’s a way to conduct foodborne illness investigations.
ADHS would be responsible for writing the regulations including procedures for suspending or revoking a producer’s registration when people don’t comply with all the requirements.
The reality is that all kinds of home-cooked foods that require time and temperature controls like burritos, tamales etc. are already being sold in parking lots all over Arizona. The vendors operate in the shadows, aren’t registered, may or may not have completed a food safety course, and generally don’t label their products… meaning tracing is difficult if there’s a foodborne illness outbreak.
House Bill 2509 would fix that by requiring registration, production and time & temperature controls, education courses, registration, and appropriate labeling.
The big public health dividend would be an improvement in the social determinants of health by expanding opportunities for folks to supplement their income, improving their ability to make ends meet, and generally make for happier families. The public would benefit by having more access to more diverse, creative, and tasty cottage industry foods.
The full disclosure provisions of the law mean customers would be buying the food with their eyes wide open, knowing full-well that the food wasn’t prepared in a commercial kitchen. Why not give them that choice?
The Speaker of the House & president of the Senate intend to bring House Bill 2509 to the floor to override the Governor’s veto Tuesday. It’s been more than 40 years since the state legislature has overridden a veto. Will it happen on Tuesday? We shall see.
See: Legislature setting up 1st veto override to support ‘cottage foods’
I’m still getting caught up after a pretty long vacation. I just went through all the bills we’ve taken positions on and updated our ‘evergreen’ PowerPoint with all the bills.
The state legislature is on a 2-week vacation that they’re calling ‘Spring Break’ providing a respite from tracking bills – and also giving Senate and House leadership a chance to negotiate with Team Hobbs on the state budget. Here’s Our PowerPoint with summary of bills as of “Spring Break”
The real reason for the break is fill the House spot formally filled by Rep. Liz Harris (who was expelled from the chamber). Republican Precinct Committeepersons from that district (Chandler/Gilbert) will send the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors 3 candidates to select from to fill the post. I’m not sure what would happen if the PC’s send the Board 3 election deniers.
