What your locality allows
Updated
On this page5
Spice is treated more lightly than most food businesses, because it is dry, shelf stable and not a growth medium. How much more lightly depends entirely on where you are.
Dry spice sits in an easier category
The hazards that drive food regulation are microbial growth, temperature abuse and allergen control in complex preparations. A jar of ground cumin has no water activity to support growth and no process step that can go wrong in a dangerous way.
That is why many jurisdictions allow packing dry shelf-stable products in a home kitchen under a cottage food exemption where they would not allow anything chilled or canned.
Cottage food, and its limits
Cottage food regimes are state by state and they differ on almost every dimension: what products qualify, what sales channels are permitted, what the annual ceiling is, and what must appear on the label.
The limits that most often catch people are the channel ones. Many exemptions cover direct sales only, which means a farmers market and your own door but not wholesale and not online. A single wholesale order can take you outside the exemption entirely, and exemptions are not partial.
What a license actually requires
If you outgrow the exemption or start out beyond it, you are typically registering a food facility and operating under preventive controls: a written plan, records, and an inspection regime.
For dry spice the plan is genuinely simpler than for most foods, and the controls concentrate on supplier verification and on the treatment step, because the pathogen risk arrives with the material rather than being created by your process.
Finding your own answer
Your state's department of agriculture or health publishes this, and your county may add to it. Extension services in several states publish plain-language guides to their own regime, which are usually clearer than the statute.
Ask the specific questions rather than the general one: can I pack dry spice at home, can I sell it online, can I sell it wholesale, and what is the ceiling. The general question gets a general answer and the specific ones decide your business model.