Hi there,
When it comes to cottage food bills,
opponents are quick to argue that homemade food isn't safe enough.
But is that actually true?
I've long known that cottage food is incredibly safe. In 10+ years of intimately following this industry,
I have never heard of:- Anyone getting sick from a cottage food product
- Any cottage food entrepreneur filing a liability insurance claim
- Anyone suing a cottage food business
But I could never actually
prove that cottage food is safe.
Well, now
the Institute for Justice has done the research.
Last year, they reached out to health departments in the 7 states with the most lenient cottage food laws, and learned that
there have been ZERO confirmed cases of foodborne illness caused by cottage food. Ever.In fact, there were only two suspected (not confirmed) cases, both out of Riverside County in CA. Which makes sense, since Riverside was the first to adopt
CA's micro-restaurant law a few years ago, and
national data consistently shows that
the majority of foodborne outbreaks come from restaurants. Even still, 2 suspected cases is insanely low.
Although the results were no surprise to me, it shouldn't necessarily be expected either. After all, the
CDC estimates that
48 million foodborne illnesses occur each year in the US. That's a lot of cases, and it
translates to a lot of food safety complaints.
Let's just take California, one of the states in IJ's study. My estimates show that there have been
~300,000 food safety complaints in CA since its cottage food law started 11 years ago.
None of those were caused by a cottage food producer. And there have been ~7,500 complaints in Riverside County since it adopted the micro-restaurant law, only 2 of which were caused by a micro-restaurant.
You might not have known that only
7% of reported foodborne illnesses are caused by food prepared at home (yes, 90% are caused by "safe" commercial kitchens), but IJ's study indicates that
cottage food products are far safer than that.
Why would that be? A couple reasons:
- Even though each of the 7 states does allow the sale of perishable foods, I can confirm that the vast majority of cottage foods sold in those states are nonperishable, and it's near impossible to get sick from nonperishable foods
- Cottage food producers take pride in their work, are extra careful when producing food for someone else, and have a lot on the line if any customer were to have a problem
So there you have it.
It's official: cottage food products are safer than any other kind of food products we know of!And this new data should hopefully
make it easier to ward off any of those pesky cottage food bill opponents. :)
Forraging ahead,
David