Hi there,
First off, just a quick reminder that this Saturday (Nov 6th) is the deadline for
submitting a photo into IJ's Halloween contest.
Speaking of Halloween, I hope you had a great Halloween weekend! It was the first time Ray really knew what was happening (he stayed in the stroller last year). He tends to be a bit shy around strangers, so we weren't sure how he'd do with the trick-or-treating, but he did great! We did have to bribe him with candy to get him into his
dino costume though. :)
Anyway, now that we are into November,
Oklahoma's new law is now in effect! And it is a huge improvement from their previous law!
Oklahoma recently stood as the state with the worst-ranked cottage food law in the nation (except for Rhode Island, which still restricts their law to farmers). It was the last remaining state to have the "poor" status on
Forrager's map.
And that inspired me to give the map a bit of a refresh!
When I first made the map back in 2012, the cottage food landscape looked A LOT different! Almost half of the states didn't even have a cottage food law, and there was no such thing as a food freedom law.
A good cottage food law back then wouldn't necessarily be considered all that good today. But although our industry has changed a lot over the years, the ranking algorithm for my map hasn't. It's stayed pretty much the same since 2012.
And as a result, the map was looking rather, well...
green.
So I did a little tinkering with the code to the site, and
now it's much easier to see which states have good laws, and which ones could use improvement. Basically I made it a bit harder for a state to be considered "great", and a bit easier for a state to be considered "poor" or "okay".
But that's not all I did! I also revamped part of the algorithm itself. Up until now, the ranking has been a simple calculation of three factors: venues, sales limit, & allowed foods.
But a sales limit is actually just one of multiple potential limitations that a state can place on producers. So now the algorithm factors in the most important restrictions that a producer could face.
In other words, your state's rank was just dinged if it has any of the following limitations:
- No pets allowed in the home
- Restrictions on how many employees you can have
- No interstate sales
- Requires food to be consumed in a home
- Only for farmers
For instance, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, which have long held the "great" status on Forrager's map, were knocked down a notch for their pet policies.
A couple things to note:
- Some states have multiple laws that make their state better than the map indicates. The map only shows the rank of a state's most basic law, which is usually the one that is the easiest for most people to use.
- I'm still catching up with some of the changes in 2021. A few states still need updating, but I've put a notice on the top of their law page if that's the case.
I do have more updates planned for making the map more accurate, but those will likely come next year!
Until next week,
David