Cottage Food: A Step Towards a Law

[marmar]

from Civil Eats:



Cottage Food: A Step Towards a Law

April 19th, 2012
By Gavin Crynes


“All food businesses start in a home kitchen,” said Shakirah Simley at a recent Kitchen Table Talks in San Francisco. Her statement is a simple reflection on the ethos driving the recent cottage food legislation in California. Abuzz among the craft food community for months, the California Homemade Food Act (AB 1616) passed the Assembly Committee on Health on April 17th in a unanimous vote of support by all 15 committee members.

With widespread support by almost 60 organizations and businesses who have already written letters to the California legislature, including Bay Area institutions La Cocina, Garden for the Environment and Rainbow Grocery, the legislation was the subject of the Kitchen Table Talks discussion at 18 Reasons, co-hosted by SPUR. Richard Lee, the Director of Environmental Health Regulatory Programs at the San Francisco Department of Public Health and Christina Oatfield, Food Policy Director at the Sustainable Economies Law Center–which introduced the bill–joined Simley in discussing the implications of the legislation on California’s growing number of food entrepreneurs.

A Climate for Entrepreneurship

The California Homemade Food Act, introduced in February by Assemblyman Mike Gatto, frames itself as a response to the prevalence of obesity, lack of access to nutritional food, and power of small businesses to supplement income and create jobs in igniting our economy. In doing so, it creates a new classification system to define a “cottage food operation.” Establishing this new “cottage food operation” addresses the barriers to entry for a food entrepreneur by exempting them from the existing Sherman Law, which regulates the manufacture, sale, labeling and advertising activities related to food, drugs, devices and cosmetics, and the California Retail Food Code, which regulates the health and safety standards for retail food facilities.

For a craft food entrepreneur, for whom AB 1616 would allow to sell non-potentially hazardous foods to the public out of their home kitchen, the largest barrier to entry lies in the cost and logistics of working in a commercial kitchen space. As Simley relayed, graduating from the home kitchen is not something that you do until you are “physically, mentally or financially ready.” When her artisanal jam company moved from her home kitchen in Oakland to a commercial space at La Cocina, it required huge adjustments to scale up production properly and feel comfortable making food with new equipment in a new space, surrounded by the bustle of other food entrepreneurs. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://civileats.com/2012/04/19/cottage-food-a-step-towards-a-law/

[xchrom]

1. The best Indian food I get in Durham comes

This lady's kitchen.

I can never remember her name - but she changes the menu all the time.

It's delish!

the butter chicken is to die.