Should Selling Home-Cooked Food Be Legal?

What’s the story?

• Think Nana would make a fortune selling her Snicker doodles? Well, now she can without breaking the law: California has legalized the preparation and selling homemade food.
• Food safety regulations mean that if you prepare food at home for resale, you’re breaking the law in most states.

What would California’s law do?

The Homemade Food Operations Act allows cooks and chefs to run “Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operations” (MHKs) as long as they follow these rules:

• Annual sales limit of $50,000.
• A maximum of 60 individual meals prepared weekly.
• Food must be prepared, cooked, and served on the same day.
• Sales must occur directly between home cook and customer.
• MHKs must obtain food manager training and certification.
• Operators must pay for annual inspections.

What are both sides saying?

• The County Health Executives Association of California and Health Officers Association of California oppose the bill, writing in a letter that they have “tremendous concerns about the preparation of potentially hazardous foods in home kitchens.” They add:

“Cooking, cooling, and reheating foods, as well as ensuring appropriate hot and cold temperature controls, is challenging in a commercial kitchen even with staff training and appropriate equipment and facilities. This danger increases exponentially in a home kitchen.”

• But Matt Jorgensen, founder of a now-shuttered Oakland-based startup that had linked home cooks to hungry customers, said:

“The irony is that we all eat out of our home kitchens all the time, and there is no health crisis.”

• Assembly member Eduardo Garcia, the California Democrat who introduced the bill, tweeted:

What do you think?

Should more states allow the selling of home-cooked food? Or do you have “tremendous concerns about the preparation of potentially hazardous foods in home kitchens”? Hit Take Action and tell your reps, then share your comments below.

—Josh Herman

(Photo Credit: iStockphoto.com / Valentyna Gupalo)