House Passes Bill to Create Exemptions for Peeled Fruits and Vegetables in Child Care Food Safety Rules

The Cutting Red Tape on Child Care Providers Act passed in the House last week. Sponsored by Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state, the legislation aims to create a separate category for foods with a low risk for foodborne illness like peeled fruits and vegetables.

It seeks to prevent childcare providers from being penalized for serving them. ” She confirmed that under regulations in Washington and other states, serving fresh fruit would require a daycare owner to install additional sinks. Colleen Condon owns a daycare facility in Washington.

She told CNN the regulations create unnecessary burdens. “What we’re actually experiencing is a system that is burdened with too many regulations. If we’re spending all of our time thinking about how we’re going to peel a banana, do all this other stuff like, that’s time.

Teachers aren’t engaging with kids, yeah, and doing the actual important work,” Condon said. Dana Christiansen owns two large Washington daycare facilities and is a board member of the Washington Childcare Centers Association. She said everyone agrees health and safety of children is the most important thing.

“But when you put these things into place that just create hurdles and hurdles and battles and battles, you are just hurting an industry that just runs on really tight margins and can really struggle,” Christiansen said. Erica Phillips is executive director of the National Association for Family Child Care.

She stated that the health and safety of children is the most important aspect of running a childcare program, and the providers who do that work take that responsibility very seriously.

“There are opportunities where we can make sure that the regulations are specific to childcare and not creating an undue burden on them by, requiring them to get a certification, or some other requirement or regulation that doesn’t really fit well with a with a childcare program,” Phillips said.

CNN has reached out to Senate Majority Leader John Thune asking whether his chamber will take up a vote on the House bill. Christiansen said she is glad Gluesenkamp Perez introduced this bill but urged members of Congress to do more to eliminate costly regulations.

“There’s so much more that I feel like needs to be done. It feels hard that it stopped at fresh fruit,” she said. The legislation addresses a regulatory quirk reported across the country at some daycare centers, where workers can open a bag of chips for a toddler but may not be allowed to peel a banana without triggering additional food preparation rules.

These kitchen upgrades create more barriers for home-based daycare providers, particularly in rural communities, according to industry voices. Some childcare advocates say standardized food-safety regulations for daycare centers are essential while acknowledging that if certain rules can be eliminated without compromising children’s health and well-being, federal regulators should consider doing so.