Wyoming Food Freedom Act Lets You Sell Home-Cooked Meals With No Permit

Most states that let people cook for the public at home built a permit around it. Wyoming went the other direction. W.S. 11-49-103(b) states that homemade food products produced, sold and consumed in compliance with the Wyoming Food Freedom Act are exempt from state licensure, permitting, inspection, packaging and labeling requirements. There is no application, no fee, no plan review, no kitchen inspection, no annual renewal and no food handler card required by the act. W.S. 11-49-103(a) frames the purpose as giving Wyoming citizens unimpeded access to healthy food from known sources and expanding sales at farmers markets, ranches, farms and producers' homes.

The definitions do the real work. Under W.S. 11-49-102(a)(iv), "homemade" means food prepared or processed in a private home kitchen that is not licensed, inspected or regulated. Under (a)(vi), a "producer" is a person who grows, harvests, prepares or processes food or drink products on property they own or lease, produces no more than 250,000 individual food or drink products a year, and takes in no more than $250,000 in gross revenue a year from them. Cross either ceiling and you are no longer a producer under the act, which means the exemption stops and ordinary Wyoming food licensing applies. Under (a)(v), an "informed end consumer" is the last person to buy the product, who does not resell it, and who has been told it is not licensed, regulated or inspected. Under (a)(i), delivery may happen at a farm, ranch, farmers market, home, office or any location the producer and the buyer agree to, and (a)(xii) allows a named designated agent, including a consignment market or food freedom store, to handle marketing, transport, storage and delivery without ever taking ownership.

What separates Wyoming from a cottage food state is the treatment of potentially hazardous food. W.S. 11-49-102(a)(xi) defines that category to include foods requiring refrigeration, dairy products, quiches, pizzas, frozen doughs, meat and cooked vegetables and beans, and the act permits their sale. The catch is in W.S. 11-49-103(c)(i): for potentially hazardous homemade food other than eggs and dairy, the seller must be the producer or the producer's designated agent, not a third party. Eggs, dairy and non-potentially hazardous items may also be sold through a third party vendor such as a retail shop or grocery store. Every transaction must be directly between the producer and the informed end consumer, must occur only in Wyoming, and must not involve interstate commerce, under 11-49-103(c)(iii) and (c)(iv). Sales locations are limited by (c)(vi) to farmers markets, farms, ranches, the producer's home or office, the retail location of a permitted third party seller, or any location the producer and buyer agree on.

Meat is where the act stops. W.S. 11-49-103(c)(v) forbids the sale of meat products, then lists the exceptions: poultry where the producer slaughters no more than 1,000 birds of his own raising in a calendar year and does not buy or sell poultry from any other source, live animals, portions of live animals sold before slaughter for future delivery, domestic rabbit meat, farm raised fish that are raised in accordance with title 23 of the Wyoming statutes and are not catfish, meat delivered through an animal share under W.S. 11-49-104, and the red meat provision in subsection (n). Read subsection (o) before relying on (n). Subsection (n) would let a producer sell meat from cattle, sheep, swine or goats raised and slaughtered on the producer's own premises or at a custom slaughter facility, but (o) makes it effective only on the date the governor, on advice of the attorney general, certifies to the secretary of state that such sales have been legalized under federal law, either by an act of Congress or by a final federal court decision invalidating the federal prohibition. That certification is the trigger, and until it happens subsection (n) is codified but inoperative. Selling uninspected beef, pork, lamb or goat in Wyoming today is not permitted by the Food Freedom Act.

Disclosure replaces inspection. W.S. 11-49-103(e) requires the producer to inform the end consumer that the food is not certified, labeled, licensed, packaged, regulated or inspected, and a third party seller of non-potentially hazardous food, eggs or dairy must give the same notice. W.S. 11-49-103(k) adds a written label for non-potentially hazardous food and dairy products sold at a retail location or grocery store, reading "this food was made in a home kitchen, is not regulated or inspected and may contain allergens", and bars displaying that food on the same shelf or display as food produced in a licensed establishment. Under 11-49-103(d), homemade food may not be served or used as an ingredient in a commercial food establishment other than raw unprocessed fruits and vegetables, and a retail space selling homemade food must tell the consumer it is uninspected and display a sign saying so. Where such a retail space is associated with a commercial food establishment or sells inspected products, department of agriculture rules require physical separation with a separate door and separate point of sale, clear signage marking inspected and uninspected areas, and separated coolers, freezers and storage.

Two boundaries worth knowing. W.S. 11-49-103(g) preserves the Wyoming Department of Health's authority to investigate foodborne illness, so the exemption from licensing is not an exemption from an outbreak investigation. W.S. 11-49-103(m) caps the regulator from the other side: the department of agriculture may not promulgate any food and health inspection standard applicable to the act that is more stringent than a United States Department of Agriculture standard, and nothing in the article may be read as more restrictive than applicable federal requirements. Note also what the act does not address. It exempts you from state licensure and inspection; it says nothing about county or municipal zoning, home occupation permits, signage or parking, and nothing in Chapter 49 mentions local government at all, so a city home-occupation ordinance still applies to a Wyoming home kitchen business on its own terms.

The Food Freedom Act carries no fine schedule and creates no inspection program to violate. The consequence of stepping outside it is losing the exemption. S. S. S. 11-49-103(c)(iv), and a sale to someone who intends to resell breaks the informed end consumer definition in 11-49-102(a)(v). In each case the food falls back under ordinary Wyoming food licensing and inspection administered by the Wyoming Department of Agriculture, and the operator is running an unlicensed food establishment. S. 11-49-103(o) that direct-to-consumer sales of uninspected meat products have been legalized under federal law, which that subsection defines as either a federal statute allowing them or a final decision by a federal court with jurisdiction over Wyoming declaring the federal prohibition invalid.

S. S. 11-49-103(d) makes it a compliance failure for a commercial food establishment to serve or use homemade food as an ingredient, which puts the licensed restaurant that buys from you at risk rather than you.