Finding your state's answer
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Who to call
Which of these three owns your answer depends on the state, and the fastest way to find out is to call the department of agriculture first and let them redirect you. They will know whose remit it is even when it is not theirs, and a redirect from them carries further than a cold call does.
- Your state department of agriculture, which administers cottage food law and inspects food producers in most states.
- Your state health department, in the states where food safety sits there instead.
- Your land grant university extension service, which usually publishes a plain-language summary and will talk to you.
What to ask, exactly
Ask all six, in this order, in one call. The acidified question is last because it is the one most likely to change the answers above it, and asking it first can send the conversation into a regime that may not apply to you. Read your ingredient list out rather than summarizing it: the thing that moves a product out of an exemption is almost never the fruit.
- Is a shelf-stable fruit jam on your permitted product list.
- Here is my full ingredient list. Does anything on it change the answer.
- What must my label carry, and in what type size, if I sell under the exemption.
- What is the annual sales cap, and what counts towards it.
- May I sell wholesale, or only direct.
- Would you treat this product as acidified.
Why we will not list the fifty answers
A table of fifty states would be the most useful thing on this page and also the most dangerous, because it would be wrong somewhere within a year and there would be no way to tell which row had gone stale. A caps-and-products list is exactly the kind of fact that changes quietly in a legislative session nobody outside the state notices.
Write down what they say
Staff change, guidance gets revised, and the person who told you something in March may not be the person standing in your kitchen in September. None of that is anybody acting in bad faith; it is just how an agency works over the life of a small business.
Who you spoke to and when. If an inspector later takes a different view, a dated note of the original answer is the thing that makes that a conversation rather than a problem.