During the 2011 Legislative Session, the Florida Legislature enacted House Bill 7209 allowing individuals to manufacture, sell and store certain types of “cottage food” products in an unlicensed home kitchen. The Cottage Food law became effective on July 1, 2011. To better assist prospective cottage food operators, the Division of Food Safety created a draft guidance document which contains more detailed information regarding cottage food requirements.
This is great news for bakers, candy makers, jammers, dehydraters, pasta makers and mixers of all kinds. It lowers what we in the business call “barriers to entry” allowing low risk foods to be prepared in a home kitchen as opposed to finding a commercial kitchen (and the expenses & hassles that go along with that) to prepare it. I suspect this will make our markets much more robust and be a boon for foodie entrepreneurs. The doors have just flown wide open.
While this only allows sales direct to consumer, not wholesale, imagine this scenario: get your product into a community market and area chefs who taste your product might just hire you to make goods for them in their certified kitchen. Voila, job created! Income earned!
Pingback: Markets are Up! with Sharon Yeago from Farmers Market Coalition « Front Porch Radio
Pingback: Cottage Foodie Advice & Resources « Front Porch Radio
Here’s hoping for job creation.
this is a bad law, the doors are wide open for consumers to take the fall by bad products that are properly regulated…
are not properly regulated
He Tim, that is definitely one perspective to take. It does put the risk in consumer hands, but I kind of like that option. Having been in the industry I know that without an allowance like this, there are too many barriers to entry and the artisan food movement in our area will always sputter around instead of creating jobs where people can do what they love. If you think regulation actually makes things safer, that is a bit of fantasy. The reality is that regulatory bodies make money and give the illusion of safeness by and large. True security comes from directly knowing the source of our food from a diversified and small scale community of enterprises. I can guarantee you that 90% of what you would find under the cottage food law would be ten times healthier than any of the processed food on the shelf because most cottage food producers are very informed about what is fit to eat and avoid harmful chemicals and preservatives.