I think that with biscuits of the type described in TFA (sort of fatty breakfast rolls with minimal gluten development that get jelly spread or gravy poured on them, not another name for cookies), the main thing is just not to let them dry out.
Seal them in a bag in a bag with a desiccant pack.
A wide range of nice cookies and crackers get shipped out of Japan to the USA, individually wrapped and then sealed in a bag with desiccant, and keep perfectly well for months as long as they are in the package. As soon as you unpack them they go stale like everything else.
> From 2013 to 2018, 10 states passed so-called “cottage food laws” allowing home bakers to legally sell their goods in a variety of venues, including online, says Emily Broad Leib, faculty director of the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic. Many other states amended existing food laws.
I wasn't aware of this, I thought you needed to have a licensed kitchen. Neat!
I can't access either the article or the archive thing linked in this discussion. Can anyone tell me what 10 states this is legal in? Are they listed in the article?
Every state except New Jersey now allows home-kitchen cooks to make and sell non-hazardous foods with a low risk of causing foodborne illness such as baked goods, jams, jellies and other items that do not require time and temperature controls for food safety.
Maine, North Dakota, Utah and Wyoming have gone further, enacting “food freedom” laws that exempt home producers from food-safety rules that apply to grocery stores, restaurants and other food establishments.
The Wyoming legislature adopted the nation’s first Food Freedom Act in 2015, after rejecting it five times in seven years.
North Dakota passed a similar food-freedom law
The nearly limitless cottage-food laws in North Dakota and Wyoming are far from what’s happening in Washington. The D.C. City Council passed a cottage-food act in 2013, but final rules were not issued until December 2017.
New Mexico and West Virginia are considering food-freedom laws, while North Dakota legislators might clarify their intent in a 2017 law. A food-freedom bill in Mississippi died in committee in February
Most cottage food laws not only prohibit wholesale distribution through a retailer, but also direct online sales. For example in Michigan, you can't take orders over the internet, even on your own website. Selling on Etsy is unheard off, I'm still not aware of any other state than West Virginia allowing that.
Thank you. I'm pro gig work, though I hate things like Uber and DoorDash where so much of that is dependent on you having your own car and adding more traffic to the roads and all this.
Maybe cottage industry is a term I need to use more. With the internet and all that, I think it ought to be easier to just make money from home, not harder.
We need to actively try to reverse some of these trends towards centralization and big business stamping out small business. These are some of the sources of our ills in the world today and it makes me crazy that if a rich person talks about their ideas for solutions, it's framed like they are nice people are some nonsense. If a poor person does the same thing, it's framed like they are nutcase revolutionaries or something.
I've studied certain things for a lot of years and have lived experience to inform my mental models and I'm flabbergasted that people are so openly hostile to talking about solutions. They just want to whine and when you propose solutions, they get all up in arms and try to shut that conversation down.
Why? I don't get it. Do people just like being miserable and sitting around doing nothing while waiting for the world to burn to the ground?
I wonder if the last point is not so much hostility but black-hat brainstorming of what could go wrong, particularly if your counterparty believes they have some experience that you don’t have.
If someone comes to me with an idea for an idea of how to solve a problem in a space I know well and (as far as I know) they don’t know as well, my comments are likely to be at least 2:1 negative:positive. It doesn’t do them any good for me to tell them how awesome it would be for their idea to revolutionize the world. They already feel that. They more likely need to here where they’re likely to struggle or refine/test their idea before sinking thousands of hours into it.
Maybe that’s a possible underlying (positively motivated) driver for the negativity you experience?
Check out forrager.com (idk why they spell it wrong like that) if you’re interested in starting your own cottage food business. They have a database of laws for every state and a whole bunch of helpful info to get you started: what you’re allowed to sell, who you’re allowed to sell it to, allowed venues, annual sales limit, etc. And there are people who can answer just about any question you could dream up. I was able to get set up in my state for less than $100 and a few pages of paperwork.
I don't personally have plans to start a food business from home, but I run r/GigWorks and several websites and I actively try to foster micro-enterprise to whatever degree I can as just one person with a lot of personal burdens myself.
Cottage food laws differ per state. Here in WA it's pretty common sense. You can create things that don't require refrigeration or grease traps, so, granola or bread, for example. You are limited to $20,000 sales per annum. And your kitchen must follow certain regulations, such as no pets. IIRC an inspection may be required too.
My cousin is a restaurant inspector and the horror stories she has told even for professional kitchens is unbelievable. The apathy and greed of some is going to kill people some day.
Rice is one of the worst foods. Your choice is to keep it super hot or in a flat tray and chilled. There's a natural bacteria that grows if the rice is in a bowel and isn't hot anymore. I looked it up: bacillus cereus.
Soap is another it's incredible how many kitchens have no soap. The inspector arrives and then there is a scramble to find some soap. But it makes you think how many people had a crap and just went back to work without washing their hands with soap.
Like it or not, people are eating mass amounts of home-cooked zero-inspection food every day. Letting a little bit of that get sold for profit isn't a major risk.
> Rice is one of the worst foods. Your choice is to keep it super hot or in a flat tray and chilled.
These laws generally apply to shelf-stable foods. So not rice.
> Soap is another it's incredible how many kitchens have no soap. The inspector arrives and then there is a scramble to find some soap. But it makes you think how many people had a crap and just went back to work without washing their hands with soap.
Isn't that the exact kind of problem that would be less likely in a home environment?
> Letting a little bit of that get sold for profit isn't a major risk.
This sounds exactly like the sort of thing where statistics are how you get an answer. And, googling a bit, there's answers. Or at least details.
At some point, all food was like this, and AFAIK that day was at least as recent as the 1800s. Right? I wonder when the first time a "food inspector" (in the modern sense) was a thing.
It’s much older than that, food standards go way back. England’s rather famous Assize of Bread and Ale regulating quality dates to 1266. There is likely thousands of years of history around bakers or brewers trying to save money and laws or customs designed to regulate it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assize_of_Bread_and_Ale
That said, the knowledge of pathogens is relatively recent ~1670s which ended up changing many rules. Historically food safety was a major issue that killed a lot of people. But, it’s not really something most people know much about.
At some point all food was uninspected. But this isn't about all food. Those numbers are useless. This is generally about shelf-stable goods sold in small amounts. The sales are limited in two different major ways.
That's also my assumption as it makes a lot of sense, basically what they're saying is "wet" warm rice is a breeding ground for bacteria.
Though reading wiki for B. cereus it doesn't seem like an issue for "fresh" rice but rather when rice is cooked, improperly refrigerated (aka not refrigerated immediately), then just warmed over: this allows spores to germinate, grow and produce toxins which are difficult to destroy (wiki quotes 56C for 5mn to destroy enterotoxins but 121C for 90mn for emetic toxins).
Unfortunately, most states restrict online sales under the cottage food law due to safety concerns. The article portraits a seller in West Virginia, and it was just in 2019 that a change in their cottage food regulations made it possible to take online orders and ship food. I hope more states will take a look at this and check if this is a successful model they could apply too.
California passes similar cottage food laws but the counties have been mostly fighting it.
I had a friend try to do a startup to connect those who want to cook with those who wanted to buy but couldn't get much traction due to local city and county laws. After about a year he gave up on it.
I wonder when Etsy will stop firing employees without severance packages and blackballing them in technology for months to years because they ask too many questions.
I’ve never heard of any company that has fired someone (which usually implies that it was with cause, as opposed to a lay-off, which does not imply a cause, but rather that the company needed to do cost cutting) giving them a severance package.
And I really doubt Etsy has the clout to blackball anyone in the technology industry.
About 5 years ago a Russian waitress at a restaurant in Queens revealed to me a vast non-English network of home cooks in the NYC area selling their wares on Facebook.
I’m pretty sure that channel got shut down but am pleased to think they have found others that still work.
If and when it becomes legal it’s a really interesting market.
Facebook has a ton of hidden/private groups selling things. I know of several local to me, and I’m in a fairly rural area. All of them violate Facebook policy, and some are outright illegal. It’s interesting to watch!
> 2) they don’t get shut down and handed over to the police
Do you mean the same police defeated over and over in the war on drugs should be dispatched to put a 70 years old grand'ma trying to make a few $$ selling an apple pie on Facebook.
People are not asking for online surveillance, elected (and non-elected) official are trying to put in place the level of surveillance you're mentioning to secure their power. But I totally understand that the barter economy is acting against their plan.
Re 2), Facebook has little incentive to care. These groups form on Facebook because that's where people are, and their existence keeps people on Facebook. It's a symbiotic relationship.
>> It’s strange that...2) they don’t get shut down and handed over to the police
Facebook and Twitter also have angry mobs sending tens of thousands of death threats to reporters, random people, people why disagree with, etc. They are doing it publicly, and as far as I can see, not even those criminal cases are handed over to police. Why would mom-and-pop food operations with potential civil offenses be handed over to police?
In our county, you are not allowed to make home made baked goods for school functions (classroom birthday party, or whatever). Only choice is to send in baked goods from walmart or whatever. The concern seems to be food allergens.
Go figure. Many people make food at home because they cannot eat the stuff produced commercially, or want a healthier alternative.
In the US, soybeans are ubiquitous in baked goods (vegetable oil is usually soybean oil), and they're a top 5 food allergen. It is rare to find commercially baked goods that do not have them.
When did getting food from strangers with ingredients you can barely pronounce become safer than from your neighbor?
Probably at the same time that people realized that have barely pronounceable ingredients is better than having entirely unknown ingredients that inevitably wind up giving a kid a severe allergic reaction.
The pronounceability of a name doesn’t make it safer. Compare dihydrogen monoxide (water) to dihydrogen dioxide (H2O2, a toxic chemical).
47 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 103 ms ] threadA wide range of nice cookies and crackers get shipped out of Japan to the USA, individually wrapped and then sealed in a bag with desiccant, and keep perfectly well for months as long as they are in the package. As soon as you unpack them they go stale like everything else.
I wasn't aware of this, I thought you needed to have a licensed kitchen. Neat!
Thanks.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2019/03/29/west-vir...
Maine, North Dakota, Utah and Wyoming have gone further, enacting “food freedom” laws that exempt home producers from food-safety rules that apply to grocery stores, restaurants and other food establishments.
The Wyoming legislature adopted the nation’s first Food Freedom Act in 2015, after rejecting it five times in seven years.
North Dakota passed a similar food-freedom law
The nearly limitless cottage-food laws in North Dakota and Wyoming are far from what’s happening in Washington. The D.C. City Council passed a cottage-food act in 2013, but final rules were not issued until December 2017.
New Mexico and West Virginia are considering food-freedom laws, while North Dakota legislators might clarify their intent in a 2017 law. A food-freedom bill in Mississippi died in committee in February
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...
Your article also talks about Kentucky.
I am not getting an unstated part of my question answered: What are the laws in the Washington state (where I live)?
Most cottage food laws not only prohibit wholesale distribution through a retailer, but also direct online sales. For example in Michigan, you can't take orders over the internet, even on your own website. Selling on Etsy is unheard off, I'm still not aware of any other state than West Virginia allowing that.
Maybe cottage industry is a term I need to use more. With the internet and all that, I think it ought to be easier to just make money from home, not harder.
We need to actively try to reverse some of these trends towards centralization and big business stamping out small business. These are some of the sources of our ills in the world today and it makes me crazy that if a rich person talks about their ideas for solutions, it's framed like they are nice people are some nonsense. If a poor person does the same thing, it's framed like they are nutcase revolutionaries or something.
I've studied certain things for a lot of years and have lived experience to inform my mental models and I'm flabbergasted that people are so openly hostile to talking about solutions. They just want to whine and when you propose solutions, they get all up in arms and try to shut that conversation down.
Why? I don't get it. Do people just like being miserable and sitting around doing nothing while waiting for the world to burn to the ground?
If someone comes to me with an idea for an idea of how to solve a problem in a space I know well and (as far as I know) they don’t know as well, my comments are likely to be at least 2:1 negative:positive. It doesn’t do them any good for me to tell them how awesome it would be for their idea to revolutionize the world. They already feel that. They more likely need to here where they’re likely to struggle or refine/test their idea before sinking thousands of hours into it.
Maybe that’s a possible underlying (positively motivated) driver for the negativity you experience?
Communication can be hard.
I don't personally have plans to start a food business from home, but I run r/GigWorks and several websites and I actively try to foster micro-enterprise to whatever degree I can as just one person with a lot of personal burdens myself.
My cousin is a restaurant inspector and the horror stories she has told even for professional kitchens is unbelievable. The apathy and greed of some is going to kill people some day.
Rice is one of the worst foods. Your choice is to keep it super hot or in a flat tray and chilled. There's a natural bacteria that grows if the rice is in a bowel and isn't hot anymore. I looked it up: bacillus cereus.
Soap is another it's incredible how many kitchens have no soap. The inspector arrives and then there is a scramble to find some soap. But it makes you think how many people had a crap and just went back to work without washing their hands with soap.
> Rice is one of the worst foods. Your choice is to keep it super hot or in a flat tray and chilled.
These laws generally apply to shelf-stable foods. So not rice.
> Soap is another it's incredible how many kitchens have no soap. The inspector arrives and then there is a scramble to find some soap. But it makes you think how many people had a crap and just went back to work without washing their hands with soap.
Isn't that the exact kind of problem that would be less likely in a home environment?
This sounds exactly like the sort of thing where statistics are how you get an answer. And, googling a bit, there's answers. Or at least details.
At some point, all food was like this, and AFAIK that day was at least as recent as the 1800s. Right? I wonder when the first time a "food inspector" (in the modern sense) was a thing.
That said, the knowledge of pathogens is relatively recent ~1670s which ended up changing many rules. Historically food safety was a major issue that killed a lot of people. But, it’s not really something most people know much about.
At some point all food was uninspected. But this isn't about all food. Those numbers are useless. This is generally about shelf-stable goods sold in small amounts. The sales are limited in two different major ways.
bowel?
Though reading wiki for B. cereus it doesn't seem like an issue for "fresh" rice but rather when rice is cooked, improperly refrigerated (aka not refrigerated immediately), then just warmed over: this allows spores to germinate, grow and produce toxins which are difficult to destroy (wiki quotes 56C for 5mn to destroy enterotoxins but 121C for 90mn for emetic toxins).
I had a friend try to do a startup to connect those who want to cook with those who wanted to buy but couldn't get much traction due to local city and county laws. After about a year he gave up on it.
And I really doubt Etsy has the clout to blackball anyone in the technology industry.
I’m pretty sure that channel got shut down but am pleased to think they have found others that still work.
If and when it becomes legal it’s a really interesting market.
It’s strange that
1) people think facebook is a good platform to do these things on
2) they don’t get shut down and handed over to the police
People keep asking for online surveillance to prevent this but in the places we already have it (eg. facebook) crime often isn’t stopped.
Do you mean the same police defeated over and over in the war on drugs should be dispatched to put a 70 years old grand'ma trying to make a few $$ selling an apple pie on Facebook.
People are not asking for online surveillance, elected (and non-elected) official are trying to put in place the level of surveillance you're mentioning to secure their power. But I totally understand that the barter economy is acting against their plan.
Facebook and Twitter also have angry mobs sending tens of thousands of death threats to reporters, random people, people why disagree with, etc. They are doing it publicly, and as far as I can see, not even those criminal cases are handed over to police. Why would mom-and-pop food operations with potential civil offenses be handed over to police?
Go figure. Many people make food at home because they cannot eat the stuff produced commercially, or want a healthier alternative.
In the US, soybeans are ubiquitous in baked goods (vegetable oil is usually soybean oil), and they're a top 5 food allergen. It is rare to find commercially baked goods that do not have them.
When did getting food from strangers with ingredients you can barely pronounce become safer than from your neighbor?
The pronounceability of a name doesn’t make it safer. Compare dihydrogen monoxide (water) to dihydrogen dioxide (H2O2, a toxic chemical).
Every vegetable oil I've seen is largely canola oil.