States Ease Restrictions on Selling Homemade Foods

Strolling through a sunny neighborhood market, admiring jams, cookies, and other treats prepared by local food enthusiasts feels like the ultimate sustainable practice. After all, shopping for locally sourced foods benefits the community's economy and cuts back on carbon emissions from food miles.

With this in mind, states from Maine to Wyoming are relaxing strict food safety laws to help small farmers and homemade food vendors sell their specialty wares more easily. Current laws require all vendors, including restaurants and food manufacturers, to prepare foods in licensed facilities with specific cooling, heating, and cleanliness requirements. Such requirements force neighborhood farmers or soccer-mom-hobbyists to pony up far more dough than they can afford for their tiny enterprises.

Although lax laws benefit small vendors, it's a sticky situation of safety versus sustainability. Health officials argue relaxing such laws puts the public at risk. If vendors do not properly refrigerate their foods or maintain a clean kitchen, bacteria, spoilage, and other food dangers will likely lurk. Robert Harrington, director of the Casper-Natrona County Health Department in Casper, W.Y., told the Associated Press, "If someone says they shouldn't have to follow regulations because they're making food in their home, I'd say, 'Why is your home so safe that it doesn't need that level of oversight and control?'"

New York City asked the same question earlier this month. After receiving much media buzz, a hip, community food market in a Brooklyn, N.Y. church was forced to shut down when city officials demanded its small vendors receive food-handling certificates and produce their wares in expensive commercial kitchens before continuing.

Of course, once homemade purveyors begin selling outside their family and friends to a broad swath of the community, they're not much different from any other licensed food vendor. Reflecting that concern, the new state laws relax safety standards for homemade vendors and small farmers only if they remain small scale and super local. Maine passed a law last year allowing poultry farmers to sell limited quantities of chicken directly to shoppers at neighborhood markets. Wisconsin's "Pickle Bill" relaxes standards for hobbyist vendors who earn less than $5,000 each year in sales. The vendors can only sell those foods with a certain acidity (which are unlikely to be contaminated) and cannot sell their goods online, wholesale, out of state, or at craft fairs or carnivals. These requirements, while restrictive, are really pretty rad — they ensure safety, small batch sales, and local sustainability.

It's ironic that there's so much fuss over the safety of homemade goods when big food corporations have a terrible track record even under stringent requirements. Recalls of vegetables, meat, and dairy products from Kraft, ConAgra, and major manufacturers due to salmonella, E. coli and listeria contamination occur virtually every day. Dozens of non-profits and health advocates have called for improved food safety legislation, such as the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act.

Some states have a great, simple compromise for health officials and small vendors: Require vendors to label their products homemade or unregulated so customers understand the risk. That, and common sense, should be enough to keep the local food movement moving forward while still maintaining consumers' health. Wyoming Rep. Sue Wallis said it best when she told the Casper Star-Tribune, "Any time you buy something from a farmers' market or a roadside stand, or a church bazaar, you know, as a consumer, that was made in somebody's kitchen. If you are concerned that it takes a government inspector's eyes before you feel safe, then don't buy it."

Photo credit: Phillie Casablanca via Flickr Creative Commons