Hi there,
Congrats to Hawaii!They just passed HB 2144, which significantly improves their cottage food law.
On the surface, it looks like all great news. The bill will:- Allow pickled and fermented foods
- Allow indirect sales through stores
- Allow online sales and shipping
Looks amazing, right? Well, I certainly hope so.For #1 above, the bill spells out the legal language and the date that it needs to be implemented by (the end of this year).
So I am very confident that
Hawaiians will be able to sell their acidified/fermented canned goods next year, which is great!
But
for #2 & #3 above, it might not be so easy. The bill requires the health department to create rules to enact them, which isn't good, and even worse, it sets no date by which the department needs to do so.
We have seen this many times before. In general,
it's not good when a bill's effectiveness depends on the health/ag department taking action. They are extremely busy, and doing something as tedious as writing new rules often falls to the bottom of the priority list.
Plus,
the health department might not agree with the new law, which incentivizes delays and/or added red tape in the new rules. This is especially problematic in states with strict health departments, and unfortunately, Hawaii's health department is known for being very strict.* But I have no idea whether or not they agree with these changes.
The worst case was Connecticut, which passed a bill in 2015, but their health department
never approved the needed rules for 3 years, at which point another bill was passed which did not require any action from the health department.
So
I am crossing my fingers for Hawaii, but not exactly getting my hopes up, if that makes sense.
Hopefully Hawaii's health department does the right thing and creates new rules within the next year,
but even if they don't, this bill is still a very good thing, because it sets the standard that Hawaii's cottage food law should include online sales, shipping, and indirect sales.
We can be confident that it will happen eventually – we just don't know exactly when or how.
Forraging ahead,
David
* We took a family trip to Hawaii a year ago, and I met many market vendors who affirmed that their health department doesn't make things easy at all.