Who inspects you

Two layers that are not the same conversation

The federal layer defines an acidified food and what is required of one. The state layer licenses the space, inspects it, and decides whether you may sell what you make and where. Makers routinely get a clear answer from one and assume it settles the other, and the gap is where somebody finds out late that the product they may legally make is one they may not sell at the venue they planned on.

Describe the product fully

Every ingredient, how it is acidified, how it is processed, the jar size, and where it will be sold. A partial description gets a confident answer to a question you did not ask. Say explicitly that it is thick, because that is the fact that changes the process conversation.

Record who told you what

Name, date, what you described, what they said. Staff change and guidance gets restated, and being able to point at a specific conversation in March is a different position from remembering that somebody said it was fine.

Nothing here is a determination

This property is written from the regulation and from published extension guidance. It is a starting point for that conversation rather than a substitute for it, and no page here can tell you that you comply.

The venue is part of the question

Where you intend to sell belongs in the conversation rather than after it. A farmers market, a retail shelf, a restaurant and mail order across a state line can each sit differently, and a maker who asks only about making the product gets an answer that does not cover the venue they were counting on. Describe the whole plan, including the part you have not started yet.

References