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Welf. & Inst. Code, § 18700 · Chapter 9.5. State Healthy Food Access Policy

Welf. & Inst. Code, § 18700

Verbatim from the official edition

Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)

(a) (1) It is hereby declared to be the established policy of the state that every human being has the right to access sufficient affordable and healthy food.

(2) Food insecurity is defined as the occasional or constant lack of access to the food one needs to live a healthy life and the uncertainty of being able to acquire enough food to meet the needs of an individual or household due to insufficient money or other resources.

(b) All relevant state agencies, including, but not limited to, the State Department of Social Services, the Department of Food and Agriculture, the State Department of Health Care Services, the State Department of Education, and the State Department of Public Health, shall consider this state policy when revising, adopting, or establishing policies, regulations, and grant criteria when those policies, regulations, and criteria are pertinent to the distribution of sufficient affordable food.

(c) This section does not expand any obligation of the state to provide food or nutrition assistance or to require the expenditure of additional resources to develop food infrastructure.

Notes and commentary — not statutory text

History

Added by Stats. 2023, Ch. 879, Sec. 2. (SB 628) Effective January 1, 2024.

Source of truth

Edition
As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
Official file
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=WIC&sectionNum=18700.
Text hash
sha256 ac6c2923585efa0e1dc00881b476287f547425fe28f04331766b8554197b72ef
Composed by
compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section

Procedural information only. Not legal advice and not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. Confirm the current text with the official publisher before relying on it.