Louisiana Cottage Food: Nine Low-Risk Categories, No Permit, and the Exemption Ends at $30,000

The nine permitted categories in R.S. 40:4.9(E) are baked goods including breads, cakes, cookies and pies; candies; cane syrup; dried mixes; honey and honeycomb products; jams, jellies and preserves; pickles and acidified foods; sauces and syrups; and spices. The prohibition on animal muscle protein or fish protein is written into the definition itself rather than added as a caveat, so a meat pie or a seafood sauce is outside the exemption no matter how it is processed. Subsection F adds a separate bar: no preparer under this section may sell any food containing cannabidiol unless the United States Food and Drug Administration approves cannabidiol as a food additive.

Cane syrup gets its own definition of where the work may happen. R.S. 40:4.9(A)(1)(a) provides that for cane syrup "the home" means, in addition to a dwelling, an open-sided structure on private property sheltering a cast iron kettle, evaporator, or other equipment for preparing cane syrup in the traditional manner. That is a Louisiana-specific accommodation for open-kettle syrup making, and it is the only food in the section given an expanded premises definition.

Baked goods carry conditions the other eight categories do not. R.S. 40:4.9(A)(1)(b) removes the exemption entirely from a preparer of breads, cakes, cookies or pies who employs any individual to assist in the preparation, so a home baker who hires help loses the carve-out while a jam maker who hires help does not. R.S. 40:4.9(A)(2) then imposes a sanitation list on home bakery work: outside openings protected against flies and vermin, construction that excludes rats, mice and roaches, domestic pets excluded from any part of the establishment where preparation and baking take place, equipment kept clean, free from cracks and where possible made of non-corroding metal or other smooth impervious material, refrigeration holding perishable products at a temperature not exceeding forty-five degrees Fahrenheit, and food contact surfaces cleaned and sanitized after each day's production. Custard and cream-filled products go further: only pasteurized milk or milk products may be used, the mix must be cooked at a minimum to the equivalent of one hundred forty-five degrees Fahrenheit for not less than thirty minutes, it must be transferred immediately into previously sanitized containers, covered and chilled as rapidly as possible to forty-five degrees or below, no cloth filled bags may be used, and preparers may not touch the filling with their hands after cooking.

Two obligations apply to every low-risk food. R.S. 40:4.9(D)(1)(a) requires a label clearly indicating the food was not produced in a licensed or regulated facility, with one exception at (D)(1)(b) for raw honey that is not pasteurized, filtered or otherwise processed so as to remove natural pollen. R.S. 40:4.9(D)(2) forbids any sale unless the preparer is registered to collect applicable local sales and use taxes, evidenced by a current sales tax certificate issued by the sales and use tax collector for the parish where the sales occur. Wholesale is closed off for bakery items: R.S. 40:4.9(C) prohibits an individual preparing breads, cakes, cookies or pies in the home from selling them to any retail business or individual for resale.

The thirty thousand dollar figure is a plain statutory number, not an indexed one, and nothing in the section provides for adjustment. The section's history line runs Acts 1991, No. 603; Acts 1995, No. 977; Acts 1997, No. 658; Acts 2013, No. 370; Acts 2014, No. 542; Acts 2014, No. 789; Acts 2015, No. 45; Acts 2019, No. 164, effective June 6, 2019; and Acts 2022, No. 357, so no act after 2022 has touched it, on a site the Legislature states is updated through the 2025 First Extraordinary Session. Note also how the cap is phrased: the section does not apply where gross annual sales "equal thirty thousand dollars or more," so the exemption is lost at thirty thousand exactly, not above it.

What the exemption is measured against is the Sanitary Code the state health officer enforces under La. R.S. 40:5(A)(3), together with the permit and inspection powers in R.S. 40:5(A)(5) and (7). A preparer who crosses the sales cap, hires bakery help, or makes something outside the nine categories is back inside that permitting regime rather than merely non-compliant with a cottage food rule.

Losing the exemption puts the operation back under the state Sanitary Code, and La. S. 40:6(A) sets the penalties for violating it: a fine of not more than twenty-five dollars or imprisonment for not more than ten days, or both, for a first offense; not less than twenty-five and not more than fifty dollars or ten to thirty days, or both, for a second; and one hundred dollars or not less than thirty days, or both, for any subsequent offense. S. S. 56:34(A). S. 40:5(A) gives exclusive jurisdiction to enforce the Sanitary Code, to supervise, inspect and issue sanitation permits for the handling and control of hygienic conditions with respect to all food, and to make sanitary inspections and issue health permits.

S. 9(D)(2) conditions the right to sell at all on holding a current one. S. 9(A)(1)(a) also closes the obvious loophole in terms: nothing in the section may be construed to allow the sale or distribution of any unwholesome food.