AB 558, the Child Nutrition Act of 2022, will create a voluntary grant program to help schools serve more plant-based meals and milks, will be voted on in the Senate Education Committee this Thursday! Sadly, the dairy and beef industries are opposing the bill this year, despite their previous public announcement that they were not in opposition to this type of legislation.

With plant-based meals being healthier and more climate-friendly than meat and dairy, the industries are making issue with processed foods and out-of-state sourcing of plant-based foods. But what they fail to point out is that the 9 of the top 10 school lunches meals served in California all contain processed meat and/or processed cheese! Reducing processed food across the board is a laudable goal, but we should not be preventing kids accessing plant-based food because it might be processed only to turn around and serve them processed meat and dairy!

Food served at California schools is primarily sourced through the USDA, which means these foods are already coming from many places outside of California. We support efforts to ensure our state’s schools are buying food from California sources as much as possible, but it makes no sense to create unequal sourcing requirements for plant-based foods when meat and dairy have NO sourcing requirements.

We need your voice to make sure students who want access to plant-based food in school are able to get it!