Cottage food laws in South Dakota

The limits

Sales cap

Not confirmedUnverified — South Dakota's cottage food statutes (SDCL 34-18-34 to 34-18-38) do not appear to state a dollar sales cap, and SDSU Extension guidance pages reviewed (extension.sdstate.edu) describe eligibility, venues, and training rules without affirmatively stating there is no cap. Multiple non-primary aggregator sites claim HB 1322 (2023) eliminated a prior $5,000 cap, but this could not be confirmed against a primary or acceptable-secondary source. Confirm with SD DOH (doh.sd.gov) or SDSU Extension directly.

You can sell

Non-temperature-controlled food prepared at a residence (breads, cakes, cookies, candies, honey, dried goods, nuts, popcorn, crackers, and similar nonperishable items) and home-processed canned goods meeting a pH ≤4.6 or water activity ≤0.85 threshold. With required food-safety training completed every 5 years, producers may also sell additional categories reported by SDSU Extension to include home-canned goods beyond the basic acid threshold, certain perishable baked goods, perishable sauces, and frozen produce — confirm the exact expanded list with SD DOH.

You cannot sell

Low-acid canned foods without an approved process/recipe from a processing authority.

Getting set up

Permit / registration

No — SDCL § 34-18-38 exempts qualifying home producers from licensing and license fees; no application or routine inspection schedule applies.

Cost

None

Training

Yes, but only for certain product categories — an approved food safety course must be completed every 5 years to sell home-canned goods/expanded categories; training records must be retained. Baseline non-canned baked goods may not require this training — confirm exact scope by product with SD DOH.

Kitchen inspection

No

Labeling

Per SDCL § 34-18-37 (as reported by SDSU Extension): product name, producer name, physical address of production, mailing address, telephone number, date made/processed, and ingredient list; a disclosure statement to the effect that the product was not produced in a commercial kitchen and is home-processed; perishable items must include refrigeration/freezing instructions.

Where you can sell

Permitted venues

Direct-to-consumer only — farmers markets, roadside stands, church bazaars/events, home pickup, and direct delivery.

Online sales

Yes, within the direct-to-consumer model.

Delivery in state

Yes

Shipping out of state

Not allowed. South Dakota's cottage food law requires personal, in-person delivery by the seller (or a household member) to the buyer at approved venues (the seller's home, a farmers market, a roadside stand, or similar temporary venue); shipping products by mail or common carrier is not permitted under the law, which forecloses interstate shipment as well as any indirect in-state delivery method.

The fine print

Statute

South Dakota Codified Laws (SDCL) § 34-18-34 through § 34-18-38.

Recent changes

Law enacted 2010, expanded 2011 to add home-baked goods; further amendments reported in 2020 and 2022 by secondary sources — confirm exact bill numbers and effective dates with SD DOH or SD Legislative Research Council, as this research could not independently verify amendment history against a rendered statute page (sdlegislature.gov returned a browser-compatibility error on both fetch attempts).

Notes

South Dakota is the one jurisdiction in this batch where a primary .gov source was reached but its content could not be extracted as readable text: the DOH farmers-market guidance PDF returned only binary/encoded data on two separate fetch attempts, and the SD Legislature's statute page (sdlegislature.gov) returned a browser-compatibility error page on two attempts rather than statute text. Fields above are therefore built primarily from South Dakota State University (SDSU) Extension — a university extension service, which the sourcing hierarchy for this project ranks above blogs/aggregators — cross-checked against Forrager. Given the technical access issues, all figures here should be treated as needing direct confirmation with SD DOH before being relied upon, especially the training-by-category rules and any post-2022 amendments. Confirmed from a university extension or Institute for Justice source rather than the agency's own page: Interstate Shipping Allowed.