Hi there,
Can you believe that 2022 is already halfway over? Time has been flying!
Although we still have 6 months left of 2022, most states' legislative sessions have finished, so we know where most of
this year's cottage food bills stand.
This has been a strange year. We've seen a lot of successes, but we've also seen a surprising number of failures.
After successes in CA in 2018, and UT in 2021, I really thought we'd see a couple micro-restaurant bills succeed this year. There were
3 micro-restaurant bills this year (FL, GA, WA), and all of them failed.
I was also surprised to see Arizona fail to pass
their food freedom bill this year. Though it sounds likely to pass next year.
It was
not surprising to see
Mississippi &
Washington once again fail to pass a basic improvement to their bills. Not sure why these states can't seem to get on the bandwagon!
Alright, so enough with the failures! There were more of them this year than usual, and that's partly because more states are swinging for the fences on the heels of other states' successes.
So what states have succeeded in passing cottage food bills this year?
In total,
9 states have passed bills this year. That's pretty darn good, with some states still TBD.
4 of those bills are pretty simple.
LA is increasing the sales limit from $20k to $30k.
CT &
MD are increasing the sales limit from $25k to $50k. And
MO is allowing online sales and removing their $50k sales limit altogether.
That
leaves us with 5 other bills that passed, and they're all significant. Here's the Big 5, which are all already in effect:
- South Carolina: greatly expands allowed foods, allows online sales & shipping, and allows indirect sales at retail stores
- Indiana: massive improvement to their law which expands allowed foods, allows all direct sales (formerly only allowed farmers market sales), and allows online sales & shipping
- South Dakota: expands allowed foods, including acidified canned goods, fermented foods, and some types of perishable foods
- Tennessee: a food freedom law that removes restrictions for selling nonperishable foods, most notably allowing indirect sales at retail stores
- Iowa: perhaps now the best cottage food law in the nation, improves both sides of their law: 1) allows online sales, shipping, & acidified canned goods for unlicensed producers, and 2) increases the sales limit for licensed producers and allows them to sell almost ANY type of homemade food, including items with store-bought poultry and red meat (a first for any state)
And we're still waiting to hear from
CA,
MA,
MI, &
RI. From my vantage point, CA is the only one that looks likely to pass this year, but we shall see.
That about does it! To recap my recap,
an above-average number of bills have passed this year, and many of them are quite significant. We also had an above-average number of failed bills, but maybe they will pass in 2023.
Until next week,
David