Texas cottage food law lets you make and sell certain non-hazardous foods from your home with no permit and no local inspection. A cottage food production operation has annual gross income of $50,000 or less and is not a food service establishment (H&S 437.001, 437.0191).
State law, not the county, governs home food businesses. Under Health & Safety Code Chapter 437, a 'cottage food production operation' is an individual producing allowed non-time/temperature-control foods (baked goods, candy, jams and jellies, dried herbs, pickled produce at pH 4.6 or less, roasted coffee, and similar) from their home, with annual gross income of $50,000 or less from those sales. A cottage food operation is expressly not a food service establishment, and a local government, including a local health department, may not regulate its food production. Products must be labeled and sold directly to consumers. Cameron County therefore issues no cottage food permit.
There is no county cottage-food permit to violate. Mislabeling or selling prohibited (hazardous) foods can trigger state enforcement under Chapter 437 and loss of the exemption.
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See how Cameron County's cottage food operations rules stack up against other locations.
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