PositiveAge strongly supports House Bill 610 that proposes the Commonwealth Food Security and Coordination Act. Reliable access to nutritious food is foundational to healthy aging, yet many older adults are especially vulnerable during emergencies, natural disasters, and disruptions to federal nutrition programs. This legislation creates a coordinated, proactive approach to ensure that food resources can be mobilized quickly and equitably when Virginians need them most. By strengthening partnerships between state agencies and community organizations, the bill will help protect older adults, families, and caregivers from food insecurity during times of crisis. Therefore, we urge the subcommittee's support of the proposed legislation.

HB610: Do not add this control structure on top of much more nimble local solutions that you mention yourselves: food banks, community-based nonprofit food providers, mutual-aid organizations, faith-based organizations, community kitchens, and community gardens. If this law is enacted, it is simply a cover up for kickbacks, bribery, extortion, and harm to the very people it claims to protect: the food needy. The state is the last place we want to control food, especially in Virginia where there is not yet the right to grow and process one's own food. We need to reduce meddling by the government on our most crucial systems that, all said, are working fairly well compared to many other countries and times.

Madam Chair and members of the subcommittee, Voices for Virginia's Children supports HB 610 to establish the Commonwealth Food Security and Coordination Act. This past year, illuminated the hidden hunger within our communities and need for state-level systems to coordinate food access across departments. For these reasons we urge you to support this bill.

Food choice is at the very root of democracy. As a result, it is incumbent upon each and everyone of us to support the sovereignty of making choices as a consumer that will benefit our health. Nationally, we are finally having this discussion-albeit, one riddled with partisanship and controversy. Let us make no mistake about it. There is no junk food. There is junk. And there is food. As a consumer who understands the myopic consequences of choosing the junk and having to navigate through a maze of regulations to choose the REAL, I urge you to allow the citizens of the Commonwealth to choose for themselves what constitutes a life in which they may thrive. Let us become a shining example of practices that honor the land and her people.