California Leads with New Food Safety Laws
California has taken a major step in food safety and sustainability with the passage of Assembly Bill 660 (AB 660) and the California School Food Safety Act (AB 2316), signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom on September 28, 2024. These laws aim to standardize food labeling, reduce waste, and enhance school meal safety. We detail the impact of these measures in an article we published in Food Dive. Below are excerpts from the original article:
Assembly Bill 660
The overall goal of AB 660 is to create uniformity in date labels, reduce unnecessary food waste, and improve consumer food safety awareness and understanding. The press release announcing the law, highlighted the law’s goal to standardize food date labels in California to “create clarity and consistency to better inform consumers in order to significantly reduce food waste in the state.”
Starting July 1, 2026, any food manufacturer, processor, or retailer responsible for labeling food items intended for human consumption, when choosing or being legally required to display a date label for quality or safety, must use one of the following standardized terms on products manufactured on or after that date:
Read the full article here.
