Bipartisan Bill Proposes Requiring Plant-Based Milk Options in School Lunch Programs
This bill is sitting in the House Committee on Education and Workforce and has not moved since March 2025. Nothing has happened with this bill for 15 months, and it is considered stalled. A similar bill in the Senate is also not moving forward.
Companion bill: Bipartisan Bill Requires Schools to Offer Plant-Based Milk Options in Cafeterias →No action since April 2025
Scores run from -100 (strongly harmful) to +100 (strongly beneficial) for each group, combining impact, certainty, scope, and duration ratings of 1-5. How impact scoring works
Dairy farmers could see a slight reduction in demand as some school milk purchases shift to plant-based alternatives. At the same time, farmers growing crops used in plant-based milk (like soybeans, oats, or almonds) could see a modest boost. The overall impact on any individual farming sector would likely be small, since school lunch milk is only one piece of the broader dairy and plant-based markets.
Referred to the House Committee on Education and Workforce.
Introduced in House
The bill was officially filed and given a number. It now enters the legislative queue.
The new law permits schools to serve nondairy milk that meets nutritional standards and requires schools to offer alternatives if students provide a note from parents. This ends the 'cow's milk mandate' that required a doctor's note for plant-based options.
The bipartisan legislation, which merged the FISCAL Act into the broader Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, allows schools to serve non-dairy, plant-based milks without a doctor's note, expanding options for the 30 million children in the National School Lunch Program.
Sens. John Fetterman, Cory Booker, and John Kennedy introduced the FISCAL Act to require schools to offer plant-based milk options. The bill aims to accommodate the millions of students who are lactose intolerant and reduce the waste of discarded dairy milk cartons.
No votes recorded for this bill yet.
Document Type
Congressional Bill
Official Title
FISCAL Act
Analysis generated by AI. Always verify with official sources.