Cottage food laws in Louisiana

The limits

Sales cap

$30,000 gross annual sales (raised from $20,000 by a 2022 amendment, House Bill 828) — this is the threshold above which the home-food exemption from Sanitary Code requirements ceases to apply

You can sell

Low-risk, non-refrigerated foods — baked goods (breads, cakes, cookies, pies), candies, cane syrup, dried mixes, honey and honeycomb products, jams/jellies/preserves, pickles and acidified foods, sauces and syrups, and spices

You cannot sell

Foods requiring refrigeration for safety (the exemption applies only to foods that do not require refrigeration); aggregator sources describe TCS/potentially hazardous foods, meat products, dairy-based items, and cheesecake as falling outside the exemption and requiring standard commercial licensing, but this could not be confirmed against a live primary LDH source — confirm with LDH

Getting set up

Permit / registration

No — this is a statutory exemption from Louisiana Sanitary Code requirements, not a registration or permit program; producers do not register with LDH or the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry (LDAF)

Cost

None

Training

Not confirmedStill unverified. The statute (R.S. 40:4.9) itself contains no training or certification requirement of any kind. LDH's site-wide food-safety-certification program (an 8-hour Food Safety Manager Course plus exam) governs licensed retail food establishments generally; R.S. 40:4.9 preparers are statutorily exempt from LDH licensing, and no cottage-food-specific training mandate was found tied to that exemption. This is genuine silence, not confirmation that no training is required. Confirm directly with LDH.

Kitchen inspection

Not confirmedThe statute itself imposes no inspection requirement — R.S. 40:4.9 does not use the word "inspection" anywhere, consistent with the already-established fact that it exempts qualifying home preparers from the Sanitary Code. Whether LDH nonetheless retains complaint-based inspection or investigation authority over these preparers remains unverified from a primary source addressing R.S. 40:4.9 directly. A related 2025 bill, H.B. 150 (which would have repealed and replaced R.S. 40:4.9 but died in Senate committee), was drafted on the premise that homemade-food producers would remain exempt from licensing and inspection while LDH retained authority "to investigate and respond to reports of foodborne illness" — suggestive of LDH's general public-health authority reaching home preparers, but this is inference from a bill that never became law, not a confirmed statement of current law. Confirm with LDH.

Labeling

Confirmed: the statute does not mandate one specific verbatim label sentence. R.S. 40:4.9 requires only that the preparer "affix to any such food offered for sale a label which clearly indicates that the food was not produced in a licensed or regulated facility." The specific wording that circulates on cottage-food aggregator sites ("This product was processed and prepared by a cottage food operation that is not subject to Louisiana's food safety regulations") is not statutory text and is not required verbatim — any label that clearly conveys the food was not made in a licensed or regulated facility satisfies the law. The statute separately exempts raw, unfiltered/unpasteurized honey from this labeling requirement.

Where you can sell

Permitted venues

Confirmed: the statute restricts WHO the food may be sold to, not WHERE. R.S. 40:4.9 states that preparers of breads, cakes, cookies, and pies "shall not sell such foods to any retail business or individual for resale" — i.e., all sales must be direct-to-consumer, never wholesale or through a retail outlet for resale. The statute does not enumerate or restrict specific sales venues (home, farmers markets, roadside stands, fairs, festivals, special events) — any direct-to-consumer sale is permitted at any venue, provided the seller holds a current sales-tax certificate for the parish in which that particular sale occurs (this is a tax-registration requirement per parish of sale, not a geographic restriction to a single parish).

Online sales

Not confirmedStill unverified against a primary source. The statute text is silent on sales channel — it addresses only who the food may be sold to (direct-to-consumer, never for resale) and labeling/tax registration, not whether online/internet sales are permitted. Secondary aggregator sources claim online sales are allowed within Louisiana, but this could not be confirmed against the statute or LDH's own site. Confirm with LDH.

Delivery in state

Not confirmedUnverified — confirm with LDH (https://ldh.la.gov/page/cottage-food-laws). Not addressed anywhere in the R.S. 40:4.9 statute text.

Shipping out of state

No provision identified permitting shipment outside Louisiana; federal rules generally bar interstate shipment of cottage food

The fine print

Statute

Louisiana Revised Statutes 40:4.9 (Low-risk foods; preparation in home for public consumption), originally enacted as Act 542 (2013), amended in 2014, and amended by House Bill 828 (2022) to raise the gross-annual-sales threshold from $20,000 to $30,000

Recent changes

HB 828 (2022) raised the gross-annual-sales threshold from $20,000 to $30,000; no further amendments identified since 2023 — confirm with LDH or the Louisiana Legislature for any pending 2025/2026 changes

Notes

Watch item: HB 403 (2026 Regular Session) reportedly passed the Louisiana House 95-0 in April 2026 and would raise the R.S. 40:4.9 gross sales threshold from $30,000 to $50,000. Enactment could not be confirmed — legis.la.gov was unreachable from our research environment (DNS timeout) and no independent record of signature was found — so the $30,000 figure above remains the verified current statutory threshold. Re-check before relying on it. Separately, HB 150 (2025) would have repealed R.S. 40:4.9 entirely and replaced it with a broader R.S. 40:4.13 removing the cap and permitting TCS foods, but it died in Senate committee. Louisiana's cottage food law is actively contested and may change again. Note also that Louisiana state legislative sites were unreachable during our research, so Louisiana confirmations rely on Cornell LII and FindLaw reproductions of the statute rather than the state's own site.