Slow Food California works in collaboration with allied nonprofits to promote food policy legislation that is good, clean and fair. In 2018 Slow Food California and its allies successfully advocated to legalize the vending of street food, through the Safe Sidewalk Vending Act, and sales of homemade meals, through the Homemade Food Operations Act, thereby increasing equity, inclusion, and justice to the food system.
Past successes include California’s Cottage Food Law , the Urban Agriculture Incentive Zones Law, incentivizing urban agriculture through tax reductions, and the Neighborhood Food Law, which established the right of all Californians to have a garden. Slow Food California members and supporters advocate for passage of laws that will enable micro-enterprises to thrive without onerous regulation or expensive commercial kitchens. The intended beneficiaries often are low income women working from home.
In 2019, the Slow Food California Policy Committee will be organizing “citizen policy” (like “citizen science”) asking chapters to gather data in their respective counties to assess the success of these statutes in achieving the statutory goals of increasing equity, inclusion, and justice in the food system.
