 Submitted by OldDoughNut on July 12, 2010 - 10:06am
The Detroit Free Press has an interesting article today on two cottage food operation bills being signed by the gov, which I thought I'd share with friends in Michigan. The spam filter here prevents me from posting a link to the article, but if you go to freep.com, you should be able to search on "homemade foods".
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Took them long enough
I've been tracking HB 5280, authored by Representative John Proos (R) since last August, when he introduced it.
As Rep. Proos noted, to sell a pie at a Michigan Farmers Market, you would have had to invest around $30,000 to meet all the looney-toons state regulations.
Thank goodness, they've seen the light - although it took our part-time legislature 11 months to do so.
It will be interesting to see how the food allergen notice requirement is handled, since the feds define wheat as a major food allergen.
Update on Cottage Food Industry Laws?
It's only been a 1/2 of a year since MI passed laws about the cottage food industry. Any update? Have you been able to sell? What about the label requirements? Are they a detriment to sales?
Google find
http://michigan.gov/mda/0,1607,7-125-50772_45851-240577--,00.html
Labeling requirements are easily met.
Why would they be a detriment to sales? To the contrary, listing the brand of flour (unbleached and unbromated, of course) and ingredients would be positive for sales.
labeling requirements
The law in Maryland requires that you list the names of the ingredients. Example: 25 percent whole wheat bread.
Contains:
all purpose wheat flour( including malted barley flour) and whole wheat flour
water
table salt
yeast
contains zero trans fats
prepared on equipment that is also used to process peanuts and tree nets
Label requirements
I guess I figured that the words "MADE IN A HOME KITCHEN NOT INSPECTED BY THE MICHIGAN DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE" would cause label readers to have second thoughts about purchasing food.
Not the case?
Choices
Two labels:
or
Which do you think an educated shopper will choose?
As an aside, no idea how things are done in Lansing, but up here in the north woods, it's the health department that inspects restaurant kitchens and the like. The ag people serve the farming community.
Choices
I would choose the second label. The one with fewer ingredients. I read the labels at the Meijer and the Family Fare bakery too (the competition). They do it like we do with minimal ingredients (of course it's $4 a loaf and not $0.75 like we make).
Well, the good news is that we can bake, package, and sell our baked goods! Yay!