Hi there,
2022: the year of surprises.I'll be honest with you.... at one point, I thought we were in for a real dud of a year.
After
the craziness that was 2021, things started off relatively slowly last year, and a number of bills failed early on.
But then things picked up, and the wins kept on coming, including some
surprisingly massive improvements.
Sitting at the top of that list --
three of the most persistently restrictive states: Indiana, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin.
After struggling to improve their oppressive law for years,
Indiana somehow jumped out of the gate and had a really good bill signed by the governor by early March.
On the other hand,
Rhode Island's new law isn't all that great, but hey -- at least
they finally have one, which is more than I thought they'd be able to say by years-end!
And then, just when I thought all law improvements were in the books,
Wisconsin surprised us with
yet another lawsuit win in the final week of the year.
I certainly didn't expect all three of those states to improve their laws in 2022, and if those were the ONLY states that made improvements, I'd call it a very successful year for the cottage food industry.
But we're only getting started! We certainly can't forget about
Iowa, which now has
perhaps the best set of homemade food laws in the nation. I was shocked when
they pulled off another "first" for our industry by finding a loophole to allow the sale of items with red meat.
We can now add
Tennessee to the growing list of states with
an amazing food freedom law, and
South Carolina,
South Dakota, and
Missouri notched some very notable improvements as well.
Add in a few sales limit boosts (
CT,
LA,
MD) to round things out, and I'd say that
2022 was a wildly successful year for our industry!Perhaps it didn't quite match the records of 2021, but it came a whole lot closer than I ever thought it would!
Until next week,
David
P.S. Not everything was sunshine and roses last year. This recap wouldn't be complete without mentioning
the dark side of last year's bill efforts. But this email was already getting plenty long enough, so I'll get to that in a couple of weeks.