Cottage Food Label Requirements in North Dakota (2026)

Cottage food rules in North Dakota — the whole program

Who can sell homemade food in North Dakota

Who may operate, and on what terms. North Dakota does not run a cottage food PROGRAM in the sense the other forty-nine states use the word. There is no application, no roster, no number, no class, no inspection and no fee. What exists is a statutory carve-out — N.D.C.C. ch. 23-09.5, 'Cottage Food Production and Sales', created by House Bill No. 1433 of 2017 (S.L. 2017, ch. 191; approved April 14, 2017, filed April 17, 2017) — under which the State is forbidden to regulate you in the first place. The operative sentence is § 23-09.5-02(1): 'Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a state agency or political subdivision may not require licensure, permitting, certification, inspection, packaging, or labeling that pertains to the preparation or sale of cottage food products under this section. This section does not preclude an agency from providing assistance, consultation, or inspection, upon request, of a producer.' Read the second sentence as carefully as the first: state help is available, but only if you ask for it. Eligibility is therefore a definitional question, not an administrative one. You are inside the carve-out if three things are true at once. (1) You are a 'cottage food operator', defined at § 23-09.5-01(1) as 'an individual who produces or packages cottage food products in a kitchen designed and intended for use by the residents of a private home.' Note what that definition does and does not say. It says 'an individual' — the statute is written around a person, not an entity, and it contains no bar on that person also holding an LLC, a trade name or an EIN. It says 'a kitchen designed and intended for use by the residents of a private home', which is a design-and-intent test, not a licensing test: a home kitchen qualifies because of what it is, not because anyone approved it. There is no residency requirement, no age requirement, no requirement that the home be owned rather than rented, no square-footage rule, no separate-kitchen rule, no domestic-animal rule, no water-testing rule and no requirement that the kitchen be free of the household's ordinary cooking — because § 23-09.5-02(1) forbids the State from imposing any of them. (2) What you make is a 'cottage food product', defined at § 23-09.5-01(2) as 'baked goods, jams, jellies, and other food and drink products produced by a cottage food operator.' The phrase that matters is 'and other food and drink products.' North Dakota's definition is open-ended by design: it lists three examples and then sweeps in everything else edible or drinkable. This is why North Dakota is called a food freedom state rather than a cottage food state. The limits on what you may sell do not come from the definition of the product; they come from the four express carve-outs in § 23-09.5-02(3) and (4), and those carve-outs are about meat, poultry, interstate poultry commerce and resale — not about perishability, acidity, water activity or pH. (3) The transaction fits § 23-09.5-02(2): 'Transactions under this section must be directly between the cottage food operator and the informed end consumer and be only for home consumption. Transactions may occur at a farm, ranch, farmers market, farm stand, home-based kitchen, or any other venue not otherwise prohibited by law or through delivery.' Two defined terms carry the weight here. 'Informed end consumer' is 'an individual who is the last individual to purchase a cottage food product and has been informed the cottage food product is not licensed, regulated, or inspected' (§ 23-09.5-01(6)) — so informing the buyer is not a formality bolted onto the sale, it is part of what makes the buyer the kind of buyer the statute allows you to sell to. 'Home consumption' is 'food consumed within a private home or food from a private home consumed only by family members, employees, or nonpaying guests' (§ 23-09.5-01(5)). The food has to be going home with someone, not into a business's inventory. The practical shape of eligibility, then, is this: any individual cooking in a home kitchen, selling any food or drink other than uninspected meat products, direct to the person who will eat it or feed it to their household, is eligible — automatically, on the day they decide to be, with no paperwork of any kind owed to the State of North Dakota. What eligibility does NOT do is displace the rest of the legal system. It does not exempt you from the adulteration and misbranding provisions of N.D.C.C. ch. 19-02.1 (expressly the enforcement hook in N.D.A.C. 33-33-10-04(2)), from civil liability if someone is harmed, from federal law when you ship across a state line, from sales tax, from your lender's or landlord's rules, or from the separate statutes that govern dairy, alcohol and inspected meat. Those are covered in their own fields below.

What you may and may not sell

Allowed:

• Everything, subject to four express exclusions. This is the single most important thing to understand about North Dakota and the thing every out-of-state checklist gets wrong. § 23-09.5-01(2) defines a cottage food product as 'baked goods, jams, jellies, and other food and drink products produced by a cottage food operator.' There is no positive list to match your product against. If it is food or drink, it is presumptively in — and the only questions are whether it hits one of the exclusions in § 23-09.5-02(3) or (4), whether it needs the frozen-transport labeling of subsection (7), and whether some OTHER statute (dairy, alcohol, meat inspection) speaks to it.
• Baked goods of every kind, including the perishable ones. Named in the definition itself, and subsection (7) confirms that refrigeration-requiring baked goods are contemplated as sellable rather than banned: it requires the operator to 'label all cottage food products that require refrigeration, such as baked goods containing cream, custard, meringue, cheesecake, pumpkin pie, and cream cheese, with safe handling instructions and a product disclosure statement indicating the product was transported and maintained frozen.' A statute does not write labeling rules for a product it forbids. Cream pies, custard pies, meringue, cheesecake, pumpkin pie and cream-cheese-frosted cakes are all lawful North Dakota cottage foods — with the frozen-transport labeling attached.
• Jams, jellies, preserves, syrups, honey, butters and other sweet spreads. Named in the definition.
• Canned and jarred goods, including low-acid canned goods and pickled and fermented products. There is no pH rule, no water-activity rule, no approved-recipe rule and no process-authority rule anywhere in ch. 23-09.5. There WAS one in the 2019 Health Department rules — old N.D.A.C. 33-33-10-02(2) excluded 'Home-canned products, unless the products are high acid or acidified foods that are processed and canned in this state and the pH level is verified by a calibrated pH meter' — and that subsection was struck down in court and is repealed as of October 1, 2021. Low-acid home canning is a genuine botulism risk and NDSU Extension and the National Center for Home Food Preservation publish tested processes; but as a matter of North Dakota law, no agency may require you to follow them for a direct-to-consumer sale.
• Time/temperature-control (TCS) foods generally: prepared meals, casseroles, salads, sandwiches, hummus, salsa, cut produce, soups, sauces, cooked beans, dairy-containing desserts. The 2019 rules banned these and the ban was invalidated; nothing in ch. 23-09.5 excludes them. Subsection (7)'s frozen-transport labeling is the statute's own answer to perishability, and it is drafted around products that 'require refrigeration'.
• Drinks. The definition says 'food and drink products' in terms — kombucha, switchel, lemonade, cold brew, juice, syrups for drinks, herbal teas. (Alcoholic beverages are a different legal universe; see prohibited_foods.)
• Fresh and processed fruits and vegetables, whole or cut, raw, dehydrated, freeze-dried, blanched-and-frozen. Whole, unprocessed fruits and vegetables get an extra privilege under § 23-09.5-02(4): they are the one category a cottage food operator may sell INTO a food establishment, food processing plant or food store.
• Shell eggs from your own flock. HB 1433 § 1 amended N.D.C.C. § 19-07-01 in the same act, so that the egg-grading chapter now reads: 'All eggs sold or offered for sale to an ultimate consumer in this state must be candled, graded, and labeled with the correct grade designation. "Eggs" in this chapter means eggs in the shell which are the product of the domesticated poultry. A producer of eggs when selling only eggs of the producer's own flock production is exempt from the provisions of this chapter.' Two edits to notice: 'chicken' was broadened to 'poultry' (so duck and other poultry eggs are covered), and the own-flock producer exemption from candling and grading is explicit.
• Uninspected poultry and poultry products, within a hard numeric limit. § 23-09.5-02(3)(b) permits the sale of uninspected products made from poultry if, cumulatively: '(1) The cottage food operator slaughters no more than one thousand poultry raised by the cottage food operator during the calendar year; (2) The cottage food operator does not buy or sell poultry products, except products produced from poultry raised by the cottage food operator; and (3) The poultry product is not adulterated or misbranded'. All three conditions must hold. The bird must be yours, raised by you, slaughtered by you, at or under 1,000 head per calendar year — and you may not trade in anyone else's poultry.
• Wild-harvested and foraged items, including non-cultivated mushrooms, as a matter of state cottage food law. Old N.D.A.C. 33-33-10-02(5) excluded 'Wild-harvested, non-cultivated mushrooms'; that subsection is repealed. No statutory exclusion replaced it. This is one to treat with respect rather than enthusiasm: misidentified wild mushrooms kill people, and nothing in the food freedom law protects you from an adulteration action under ch. 19-02.1 or from a tort claim.
• Pet treats and animal feed, as far as ch. 23-09.5 is concerned. Old rule 33-33-10-02(7) excluded 'Animal feed or any products not intended for human consumption'; repealed. NOT CONFIRMED for this fiche: whether the ND Department of Agriculture's commercial feed program (N.D.C.C. ch. 19-13.1 territory) imposes its own registration on someone selling packaged pet treats. That chapter was not read. Treat pet products as an open question and call the Department of Agriculture before selling them.
• Home-consumption meals sold from your home kitchen — the 'microenterprise home kitchen' concept other states legislate separately. § 23-09.5-02(2) lists 'home-based kitchen' among the permitted venues in terms, and 'home consumption' means the buyer takes it home; it does not mean they may not have bought it at your door.
• Products containing pasteurized dairy as an ingredient (butter, cream, cheese, milk in a batter or a custard). Nothing excludes them, and subsection (7) contemplates cream-and-custard products explicitly. Selling RAW milk or raw dairy is governed by a separate statute — see prohibited_foods and local_rules.

Not allowed under the program:

• Uninspected products made from meat. § 23-09.5-02(3)(a): transactions may not 'Include the sale of uninspected products made from meat, except as provided under subdivision b'. This is the one true food prohibition in the chapter and it is broad: beef, pork, bison, lamb, goat, wild game. Jerky, summer sausage, meat pies, meat-filled pierogi, bone broth made from uninspected meat, chili and lasagna are out UNLESS the meat came from an inspected source. HB 1433 § 3 also amended N.D.C.C. § 36-24-06 to open with 'Unless otherwise provided in section 1 of this Act, a person may not: 1. Slaughter an animal or prepare an article usable as human food at any establishment preparing articles solely for intrastate commerce, unless the person complies with this chapter…' — i.e. the meat inspection chapter still governs, with the cottage food carve-out sitting on top of it. Buying USDA- or state-inspected meat at retail and cooking with it is a different matter and is not what subdivision (a) forbids; it forbids selling UNINSPECTED meat products.
• Poultry beyond the 1,000-bird own-raised limit, or anyone else's poultry. The exception in § 23-09.5-02(3)(b) is exhaustive; exceed 1,000 birds slaughtered in a calendar year, or buy poultry to resell, and the transaction falls outside the carve-out and back under ch. 36-24 inspection law.
• Poultry products in interstate commerce, full stop. § 23-09.5-02(3)(c) — added by Senate Bill No. 2386 (2025) as the price of removing the general interstate ban — provides that transactions may not 'Include the sale of poultry products if the transaction involves interstate commerce.' So the 2025 liberalisation that lets you ship cookies to Florida does NOT let you ship chicken anywhere outside North Dakota. This is the sharpest trap in the current statute, because the shipping headlines did not mention it.
• Anything sold for resale or for commercial use, with one exception. § 23-09.5-02(4): 'Except for whole, unprocessed fruits and vegetables, food prepared by a cottage food operator may not be sold or used in any food establishment, food processing plant, or food store.' No wholesale to a café, no supplying a bakery case at a coffee shop, no consignment shelf at a grocery, no selling to a caterer or a restaurant. The prohibition is drafted from the buyer's side as well ('or used in'), so the licensed establishment is also in breach when it uses your food. Whole, unprocessed produce is the single permitted wholesale channel.
• Sales to anyone who is not the 'informed end consumer', or for anything other than 'home consumption'. § 23-09.5-02(2). A middleman, a reseller, a subscription box operator who buys to resell, or an institution buying to serve — none of these is an end consumer eating at home.
• Raw milk and raw milk products, under ch. 23-09.5. This was a deliberate legislative choice: raw dairy was removed from HB 1433 in the House in 2017. Raw milk is instead governed by N.D.C.C. § 4.1-25-40.1 under the Department of Agriculture, enacted by House Bill No. 1515 (2023) and amended by House Bill No. 1131 (2025) ('AN ACT to amend and reenact section 4.1-25-40.1 of the North Dakota Century Code, relating to the sale of raw milk products; and to provide a penalty', signed by the Governor March 26, 2025). Under the 2023 regime the Department of Agriculture stated that 'a farm may now sell raw milk directly to the end consumer for personal consumption', limited to fluid milk, in-state, direct only, no sales to wholesalers or retail stores and no donation; the 2025 act extends the framework to raw milk products. NOT CONFIRMED for this fiche: the enacted text of HB 1131 and the current wording and penalty provision of § 4.1-25-40.1 were not read line by line. If raw dairy is your business, read § 4.1-25-40.1 itself and call the ND Department of Agriculture dairy program — do not rely on the cottage food chapter, which does not cover you.
• Alcoholic beverages. Nothing in ch. 23-09.5 mentions them, and old rule 33-33-10-02(6) excluded them before its repeal; the governing law is North Dakota's alcoholic beverage licensing regime in Title 5, which the food freedom carve-out does not touch — § 23-09.5-02(2) permits sales at 'any other venue not otherwise prohibited by law', which preserves other prohibitions rather than overriding them. Home wine or beer for sale is a licensing question, not a cottage food question.
• Adulterated or misbranded food, always. This is the enforcement floor that survives food freedom. N.D.A.C. 33-33-10-04(2) — still in force — provides that where an investigation shows a hazard 'where all reasonable measures have not been taken to ensure a cottage food product is not adulterated, contaminated by undesirable micro-organisms, or that cottage food product is misbranded or misrepresented to the informed end consumer, the cottage food operator will be notified and the department will act in accordance with North Dakota Century Code chapter 19-02.1.' Deregulation of licensing is not immunity from the food and drug chapter.
• Food prepared by someone who is ill. N.D.A.C. 33-33-10-05, still in force: 'A cottage food operator or member of the cottage food operator's private home afflicted with symptoms consistent with a contagious or infectious disease may not knowingly: 1. Handle or prepare cottage food products; or 2. Work in a cottage food production area.' This is the one affirmative sanitation duty in the whole North Dakota scheme, and it binds household members as well as the operator.
• Foods that other states forbid, when you ship. Since SB 2386 (2025) North Dakota law lets you ship out of state; the destination state's law still applies at the other end, and the FDA's food labeling and canning rules apply to interstate commerce as a matter of federal law. North Dakota removing its own barrier did not remove anyone else's.

How much you may sell

There is no sales cap. None — not in dollars, not in units, not in a percentage-of-household-income test, not in a headcount of customers. Chapter 23-09.5 contains no revenue figure anywhere in either of its two sections, and § 23-09.5-02(1) would forbid an agency from inventing one, because a revenue ceiling would function as a 'licensure, permitting, certification' trigger 'that pertains to the preparation or sale of cottage food products'. A North Dakota cottage food operator grossing $200,000 a year is in exactly the same legal position as one grossing $200. This is the structural difference between a food freedom state and a cottage food state: elsewhere the exemption is a small-scale allowance policed by a dollar figure, here it is a rule about who you sell to and what the food is made of. What DOES scale with your revenue is tax, not food law. North Dakota imposes a 5% state sales tax plus city and county local taxes, and the food rules are the ordinary retail rules, from the Office of State Tax Commissioner's own guidelines. From the Grocery Stores, Convenience Stores, & Delicatessens guideline: 'Generally food and food ingredients sold for domestic home consumption qualifies for the sales tax exemption. While most grocery store sales of food and food ingredients are tax exempt, sales tax is due on prepared food for immediate consumption, gross receipts from sales of candy, chewing gum, soft drinks and other generally recognized soft drinks (including fruit drinks which contain 50% or less fruit juice).' The same guideline's nontaxable list expressly includes 'Bakery items (including bread, rolls, buns, biscuits, bagels, croissants, pastries, donuts, Danish, cakes, pies, tarts, muffins, bars, cookies, and tortillas)' and 'Jams, jellies and preserves' — so the classic cottage food basket is largely exempt from sales tax when sold as food to take home. The Restaurants guideline draws the other side of the line: 'Sales of food products which are prepared for immediate consumption are subject to sales tax even though such products are packaged or wrapped and are sold on a take-out or to-go basis. However, bulk items not purchased for immediate consumption are not taxable. Examples of bulk items are whole pies or cakes, large quantities of bakery items and bulk ice cream.' Candy and soft drinks are taxable; a whole cake is not; a hot meal sold to be eaten at the market is. Practical consequence: if any part of your line is taxable — candy, sweetened drinks, hot food at an event — you need a North Dakota sales tax permit from the Office of State Tax Commissioner and you file through the North Dakota Taxpayer Access Point. That permit is a TAX registration and has nothing to do with food safety; it does not put you under Health and Human Services and it is not a cottage food licence. If everything you sell is exempt food for home consumption, there is no sales tax to collect, though a permit may still be the cleanest way to handle the occasional taxable item. NOT CONFIRMED for this fiche: whether a purely exempt-food seller is nonetheless required to hold a permit, and the current small-seller thresholds — the permit registration rules were read in secondary summaries of the Tax Commissioner's requirements rather than in the statute (N.D.C.C. ch. 57-39.2), so confirm with the Tax Commissioner before assuming you may skip registration. The other thing that scales is exposure. With no cap, the only brakes on a growing North Dakota home food business are liability, insurance and the resale prohibition in § 23-09.5-02(4). You can grow revenue without limit selling direct; you cannot grow by selling through stores. When a producer outgrows direct sales, the exit is a licensed food establishment under N.D.C.C. ch. 23-09 (§ 23-09-16, 'Before any food establishment… may be operated in this state, it must be licensed by the department'), with annual licence renewal under § 23-09-16.1 as enacted by Senate Bill No. 2119 (2021). That is a different regime with plan review, fees and inspection — and it is the standard route to selling wholesale.

Where you may sell

• In person, anywhere not otherwise off-limits. § 23-09.5-02(2): 'Transactions may occur at a farm, ranch, farmers market, farm stand, home-based kitchen, or any other venue not otherwise prohibited by law or through delivery.' The list is illustrative and the catch-all is generous — church halls, craft fairs, community events, pop-ups, parking lots, your own porch. The limit is the phrase 'not otherwise prohibited by law', which preserves things like liquor licensing, event permits and private property rules; it does not let a state agency prohibit a venue by rule, because subsection (1) forbids that.
• Farmers markets, defined in the statute itself: § 23-09.5-01(4), 'a market or group of booths where farmers and other cottage food operators sell cottage food products directly to consumers.' A market manager may impose their own conditions as a private matter, but no state permit attaches to your booth.
• Online, by phone, and by mail — legal since 2025 and this is the single biggest change to the law since 2017. The original HB 1433 (2017) § 23-09.5-02(3)(b) barred transactions 'conducted over the internet or phone, through the mail, or by consignment'. Senate Bill No. 2386 of the 69th Legislative Assembly struck that subdivision entirely, along with the flat interstate-commerce ban at old subdivision (a). The bill was 'AN ACT to amend and reenact subsection 3 of section 23-09.5-02 of the North Dakota Century Code, relating to cottage food transactions; and to declare an emergency', it carried 'SECTION 2. EMERGENCY. This Act is declared to be an emergency measure', it was filed with the Secretary of State March 20, 2025 and signed by the Governor March 21, 2025. Ordering and payment may now happen over the internet or the phone.
• Interstate shipping — with the poultry exception. With old subdivision (a) ('Involve interstate commerce') repealed, North Dakota law no longer stops you shipping cottage food to a customer in another state. Two cautions that the 2025 headlines skipped. First, § 23-09.5-02(3)(c) still bars poultry products in interstate commerce. Second, North Dakota can only repeal North Dakota's barrier: the receiving state's law governs receipt in that state, and interstate commerce brings the food within FDA's reach, including federal labeling requirements that North Dakota's own § 23-09.5-02(1) has no power to waive. If you ship, label to federal standards even though your state does not require a label.
• Delivery, defined at § 23-09.5-01(3) as 'the transfer of a cottage food product resulting from a transaction between a cottage food operator and an informed end consumer' — and named as a permitted mode in subsection (2). You may deliver yourself. NOT CONFIRMED: whether a third-party courier (a delivery app, a friend, a shipper) satisfies the requirement that transactions be 'directly between the cottage food operator and the informed end consumer'. The better reading is that 'directly' describes the commercial relationship (no reseller in the middle) rather than the physical hand-off, and the statute's own permission to ship by mail after SB 2386 supports that; but no ND court decision or agency statement confirming it was located.
• No wholesale, no consignment into stores, no restaurant supply. § 23-09.5-02(4) again — 'food prepared by a cottage food operator may not be sold or used in any food establishment, food processing plant, or food store' — except whole, unprocessed fruits and vegetables. Note that the 2025 repeal of the consignment language in old subdivision (3)(b) did NOT open consignment retail: subsection (4) independently blocks placing your food in a store.
• Selling to institutions, schools, hospitals and workplaces for service to others: not permitted, because that is not 'home consumption' by an 'informed end consumer'. Selling to individual employees who take the food home is fine; selling to the employer to feed a meeting is not.

Permit, registration and fees

North Dakota requires no state permit or registration for a cottage food operation.

1. Step 1 — confirm you are inside the carve-out, because that is the only 'registration' there is. Test three things: you are an individual producing or packaging in a home kitchen (§ 23-09.5-01(1)); the product is food or drink and is not an uninspected meat product or out-of-limits poultry (§ 23-09.5-02(3)); the sale is direct to an informed end consumer for home consumption and not into a store or restaurant (§ 23-09.5-02(2), (4)). If all three hold, you may start selling today. No form, no fee, no waiting period, no number.
2. Step 2 — build the required consumer disclosure into your setup before the first sale. Two separate duties, often confused. (a) § 23-09.5-02(8) requires you to 'display a consumer advisory sign at the point of sale or place a label on the cottage food product' with the exact words: 'This product is made in a home kitchen that is not inspected by the state or local health department.' Sign OR label — your choice. (b) § 23-09.5-02(5) is a broader, separate duty to 'inform the end consumer that any cottage food product or food sold under this section is not certified, labeled, licensed, packaged, regulated, or inspected'. The (5) duty is what turns a buyer into an 'informed end consumer' under § 23-09.5-01(6), so it is jurisdictional, not cosmetic. For online and shipped orders, where there is no physical point of sale, put both on the product and repeat them at checkout so the disclosure actually reaches the buyer before purchase.
3. Step 3 — if you sell anything that requires refrigeration, add the subsection (7) labeling. § 23-09.5-02(7) requires you to 'label all cottage food products that require refrigeration, such as baked goods containing cream, custard, meringue, cheesecake, pumpkin pie, and cream cheese, with safe handling instructions and a product disclosure statement indicating the product was transported and maintained frozen.' Note the consequence hiding in that sentence: it does not merely require a label, it presupposes a practice — the product IS transported and maintained frozen. Selling a cheesecake out of a cooler at 38°F and labeling it 'transported and maintained frozen' would be a misbranding problem under ch. 19-02.1, which N.D.A.C. 33-33-10-04(2) still points at.
4. Step 4 — decide your tax position. If any of your products are taxable (candy, sweetened drinks, food prepared for immediate consumption, food sold hot or with utensils at an event), register for a North Dakota sales tax permit with the Office of State Tax Commissioner and file through the Taxpayer Access Point. If everything you sell is exempt food for home consumption, this may not apply — but confirm with the Tax Commissioner rather than assuming.
5. Step 5 — deal with the non-food layers that food freedom does not touch. A trade name or LLC with the Secretary of State if you want one (not required to sell). Your homeowner's or renter's insurer, who will usually not cover a home food business without an endorsement, and a product liability policy — this matters more in North Dakota than elsewhere precisely because there is no inspection standing between you and a claim. Your landlord, HOA or lender if you rent or have covenants. Your city's zoning or home-occupation ordinance (see local_rules for why this is genuinely unsettled).
6. Step 6 — voluntary steps worth taking even though nobody can make you. § 23-09.5-02(1)'s second sentence preserves an agency's ability to provide 'assistance, consultation, or inspection, upon request', so you may ask NDHHS or your local health unit to look at your operation without thereby becoming licensed. Food-handler training, an NDSU Extension home-canning session, tested recipes from the National Center for Home Food Preservation, a thermometer log and a written recall plan are all free or cheap, and all of them are evidence of 'all reasonable measures' if a complaint investigation ever happens under N.D.A.C. 33-33-10-04(2).

Fee: $0.00 to the State of North Dakota — not a reduced fee, not a waived fee, but no fee that could lawfully be charged. § 23-09.5-02(1) forbids requiring 'licensure, permitting, certification, inspection', which is the entire set of things a food fee attaches to, and NDHHS's own page describes the Act as allowing small producers to operate 'without license or inspection fees'. Costs a North Dakota home producer actually incurs: business liability / product liability insurance (the real cost of operating in a state with no inspection); a trade name registration or LLC filing with the Secretary of State if you choose to form one; a sales tax permit is itself free but generates filing obligations; a freezer and reliable cold chain if you sell subsection (7) products; pH meter, jars and tested-recipe resources if you can; and — only if you leave the carve-out — food establishment licensing under ch. 23-09 with plan review, annual licence fee, a 50% late penalty on renewals under § 23-09-16.1(4), and inspection. NOT CONFIRMED: current ch. 23-09 food establishment licence fee amounts, which are set by department rule under § 23-09-16 and were not read for this fiche.

Renewal: Nothing to renew, because nothing was issued. There is no annual filing, no attestation, no re-training, no expiry date and no lapse to worry about. The only recurring obligations are (a) keeping the § 23-09.5-02(5) and (8) disclosures in place at every sale, (b) staying inside the 1,000-bird calendar-year poultry ceiling if you sell poultry — that ceiling resets on January 1 and is the one number in the chapter you must actually track — and (c) any sales tax filing frequency the Tax Commissioner assigns you. Watch the legislature instead of a renewal date: ch. 23-09.5 has been amended once in eight years (SB 2386, 2025) and the North Dakota Legislative Assembly meets in odd-numbered years, so the sessions to check are January–April 2027 and every other year thereafter.

Food safety training

No training is required, and none may be required. There is no food-handler card, no ServSafe requirement, no state course, no online module, no quiz and no attestation anywhere in ch. 23-09.5 — and § 23-09.5-02(1)'s bar on required 'certification' is the reason a future agency cannot add one by rule. North Dakota is one of the very few states where a person may lawfully sell prepared, perishable food to the public having taken no food safety instruction whatsoever. That is a policy choice with a consequence you should absorb rather than celebrate: the legal system's response to a home food business shifts from prevention to after-the-fact liability. Two rules that survive food freedom carry that weight. N.D.A.C. 33-33-10-05 (in force) forbids a sick operator or a sick household member from knowingly handling or preparing cottage food products or working in the production area. And N.D.A.C. 33-33-10-04(2) (in force) frames the department's post-complaint analysis around whether 'all reasonable measures have not been taken to ensure a cottage food product is not adulterated, contaminated by undesirable micro-organisms, or that cottage food product is misbranded'. 'All reasonable measures' is an unavoidably fact-specific standard, and in a state with no mandated training, evidence of voluntary training is one of the clearest ways to show you met it. What is worth doing voluntarily, in rough order of return. (1) A basic food handler course — a few dollars, a couple of hours, covers the temperature danger zone, cross-contamination and personal hygiene, which is most of what actually causes home-kitchen outbreaks. (2) NDSU Extension's home food preservation guidance and the National Center for Home Food Preservation's tested processes, if you can, pickle or ferment. This matters more in North Dakota than in states that ban low-acid canning: the law permits you to do the single most dangerous thing in home food production, so the safety burden sits entirely on you. Botulism from improperly processed low-acid canned food is the risk the repealed pH rule was aimed at. (3) Allergen discipline. North Dakota does not require an allergen declaration — it does not require any ingredient labeling at all — but the nine major allergens under federal law (milk, egg, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soy, sesame) will be what a plaintiff's lawyer asks about, and they are mandatory the moment you ship interstate and come under FDA labeling law. (4) Cold chain competence if you sell subsection (7) products: a calibrated thermometer, a freezer that holds 0°F, insulated transport, and a written record. The statute makes you assert in writing that the product 'was transported and maintained frozen'; be able to prove it. (5) A written recall procedure — a customer list, a batch code, a script — because with online and interstate sales now lawful, your product can be in five states before you learn something is wrong. Also worth knowing: § 23-09.5-02(1) expressly allows an agency to provide 'assistance, consultation, or inspection, upon request'. A voluntary walkthrough by your local health unit costs you nothing legally — requesting it does not create a licence, does not subject you to routine inspection and does not put you on a roster. It is the cheapest training available and almost nobody uses it.

Inspection

Routine inspection is prohibited; complaint investigation is not. This is the clean dividing line and both halves are statutory. The prohibition: § 23-09.5-02(1) — no state agency or political subdivision 'may… require licensure, permitting, certification, inspection, packaging, or labeling that pertains to the preparation or sale of cottage food products under this section.' No one may inspect your kitchen before you start, on a schedule, at renewal (there is none), or at a market booth as a condition of selling. A local health unit inspector who appears at a farmers market has no authority to inspect a cottage food operator's product or premises absent the trigger below. The trigger: § 23-09.5-02(9) — 'The department of health and human services or a local regulating authority may conduct an investigation upon complaint of an illness or environmental health complaint.' Two conditions: there must be a complaint, and it must be a complaint of illness or of environmental health. A complaint that you are 'unlicensed' is not a trigger, because you are lawfully unlicensed. A competitor's complaint about your prices, your signage or your popularity is not a trigger. What an investigation looks like is set out in the one part of the 2019 rules that survived. N.D.A.C. 33-33-10-04(1), effective January 1, 2020 and still in force: 'Authorized representatives of the department or local regulating authority may access a cottage food production area of a cottage food operator's private home, point of sale, or venue where transactions of cottage foods take place to conduct an investigation upon complaint of an illness or environmental health. The cottage food operator may request to see the representatives' credentials.' Read that as an operator: the access right reaches into your home kitchen, but only on the statutory trigger, and you are expressly entitled to ask for credentials. Subsection (2) of the same rule sets the standard and the consequence: if the department or local authority determines, as part of an investigation under § 23-09.5-02(9), that the source of an environmental health hazard or illness complaint is associated with your operation 'and poses a threat to public health or safety, where all reasonable measures have not been taken to ensure a cottage food product is not adulterated, contaminated by undesirable micro-organisms, or that cottage food product is misbranded or misrepresented to the informed end consumer, the cottage food operator will be notified and the department will act in accordance with North Dakota Century Code chapter 19-02.1.' Chapter 19-02.1 is the North Dakota Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act — embargo, condemnation, injunction and penalty territory. Subsection (3) then obliges you to respond: 'The cottage food operator shall prepare and submit to the department a plan of correction… The plan shall contain adequate information to enable the department to determine whether the proposed corrective action measures will abate or prevent ongoing threat to public health.' Why the surviving rules are only these two, and why the rest are gone — the history matters because obsolete guidance is still circulating. In late 2019 the Department of Health adopted N.D.A.C. ch. 33-33-10 (Administrative Rules Supplement 375, effective January 1, 2020), five sections: -01 Definitions, -02 Cottage Food Products, -03 Safe Handling Instructions and Product Disclosure Statement, -04 Illness or Environment Health Complaint Investigation, -05 Infectious Disease. Section -02 excluded whole categories the statute never excluded: 'Meat, wild game, poultry, fish, seafood, or shellfish, or products containing such items'; home-canned products unless high-acid or acidified with a pH verified by a calibrated meter; TCS foods except baked goods and certain dehydrated, freeze-dried or blanched-and-frozen produce; dairy unless pasteurized and used as an ingredient; wild-harvested non-cultivated mushrooms; alcoholic beverages; and animal feed. Home cooks, represented by the Institute for Justice, sued. Judge Cynthia M. Feland held that the Department had exceeded its authority — that 'although the Department claims that it has the general authority to enact rules governing food safety, the agency cannot adopt rules that contradict or conflict with an unambiguous act of the Legislature' — and declared the restrictions invalid and enjoined from enforcement. The Department's appeal was later withdrawn. The official record of the outcome is in the administrative code itself: in the current N.D.A.C. ch. 33-33-10, sections 33-33-10-01, -02 and -03 each read 'Repealed effective October 1, 2021', while -04 and -05 remain printed in full with their 'History: Effective January 1, 2020' notes intact. NOT CONFIRMED: the court's docket number, its exact decision date and the withdrawal date of the appeal — these come from contemporaneous news and advocacy accounts rather than from the order itself, which was not obtained. The repeal of -01, -02 and -03 effective October 1, 2021, by contrast, is confirmed from the official Legislative Council administrative code text. Practical reading for an operator today: any North Dakota checklist that tells you that you cannot sell perishable foods, cannot home-can low-acid foods, cannot sell meals, or must verify pH with a calibrated meter is quoting rules that were struck down in court and repealed in 2021. And any checklist that tells you nobody can ever come to your kitchen is also wrong — on an illness complaint, they can.

What your city or county may add

Cities and counties are preempted on food regulation, and the preemption is explicit: § 23-09.5-02(1) names the 'political subdivision' alongside the state agency as forbidden to require licensure, permitting, certification, inspection, packaging or labeling pertaining to the preparation or sale of cottage food products. A city health department cannot make you take a permit for a farmers market booth; a county cannot impose its own home-kitchen standard; a local health unit cannot condition your sales on an inspection. In practice North Dakota's local public health units — First District Health Unit, Fargo Cass Public Health, Bismarck-Burleigh and the rest — run cottage food pages that explain the Act rather than administer it, and their live role is the § 23-09.5-02(9) complaint investigation described above. Where it genuinely gets uncertain is zoning and home occupation. Subsection (1) preempts requirements 'that pertain to the preparation or sale of cottage food products'. A general home-occupation ordinance — one that limits customer traffic to a residence, signage, employees, or commercial use of a dwelling, and that applies identically to a bookkeeper, a hairdresser and a baker — is arguably not a requirement pertaining to the preparation or sale of cottage food products at all, and would survive preemption; a home-occupation permit written specifically for food businesses would not. NOT CONFIRMED and treated here as a real open question: no North Dakota appellate decision, attorney general opinion or agency statement resolving whether municipal zoning and home-occupation permitting survive § 23-09.5-02(1) was located for this fiche. If you plan to sell from your home under the 'home-based kitchen' venue in subsection (2), call your city planning department, and be aware that a city official may cite the ordinance in good faith while you may have a preemption argument. Do not expect to win it at the counter. The other layers that are not preempted at all, because they are not food regulation. Rental leases and homeowner association covenants — private contracts, wholly outside ch. 23-09.5. Mortgage or insurance conditions on commercial use of a dwelling. Fire code and building code applied to a dwelling as a dwelling. Farmers market rules: a market is usually a private association or a city-run facility, and its own booth rules, fees and insurance requirements are conditions of participating in that market, not state regulation of you; markets in North Dakota commonly ask for a certificate of liability insurance, which is a market rule and enforceable as one. Event and street-vending permits imposed on everyone using public space. Cottage food status is not a licence to occupy a sidewalk. One more layer that catches shippers. Now that SB 2386 (2025) has removed North Dakota's interstate barrier, the binding constraint on an out-of-state sale is the receiving state's law and federal law. Most states do not permit homemade food to be sold into them from outside; some allow receipt; a few are silent. North Dakota's permission runs only to the North Dakota end of the transaction. Add federal FDA labeling expectations for interstate food, and the separate absolute bar in § 23-09.5-02(3)(c) on poultry products in interstate commerce, and the sensible operating rule is: label to federal standards on anything you ship, and check the destination state before you accept the order.

Program sources: N.D.C.C. ch. 23-09.5, 'Cottage Food Production and Sales', current official text (§§ 23-09.5-01 Definitions, 23-09.5-02 Direct producer to consumer sales of cottage food products) — PDF downloaded HTTP 200, 55,163 bytes, extracted with pdftotext and read in full. https://ndlegis.gov/cencode/t23c09-5.pdf (chapter landing page: https://ndlegis.gov/cencode/t23c09-5.html) · S.L. 2017, ch. 191 — House Bill No. 1433, 65th Legislative Assembly (Reps. Simons, Rick C. Becker, Johnston, Kiefert, B. Koppelman, Magrum, Olson, Schatz, Toman; Sens. Kannianen, O. Larsen), 'AN ACT to create and enact a new chapter to title 23 of the North Dakota Century Code, relating to the direct sale of food by the producer to a consumer; and to amend and reenact sections 19-07-01 and 36-24-06…', approved April 14, 2017, filed April 17, 2017 — original enacted text of the chapter, plus the § 19-07-01 egg amendment and the § 36-24-06 meat amendment. Read in the 2017 session-law Health and Safety volume. https://ndlegis.gov/assembly/65-2017/session-laws/documents/HELTH.pdf · Senate Bill No. 2386, 69th Legislative Assembly (2025), 'AN ACT to amend and reenact subsection 3 of section 23-09.5-02 of the North Dakota Century Code, relating to cottage food transactions; and to declare an emergency' — engrossed bill text with strike-through showing repeal of the interstate-commerce bar and of the internet/phone/mail/consignment bar, and 'SECTION 2. EMERGENCY.', within the official legislative history compilation (HTTP 200, 1,916,361 bytes). https://ndlegis.gov/files/resource/69-2025/library/sb2386.pdf · SB 2386 bill overview, 69th Legislative Assembly — status Passed; Governor signed 03/21/2025; filed with Secretary of State 03/20/2025; sponsors listed. https://ndlegis.gov/assembly/69-2025/regular/bill-overview/bo2386.html · N.D.A.C. ch. 33-33-10, 'Preparation of Cottage Food Products for Sale', current official text — 33-33-10-01, -02 and -03 each 'Repealed effective October 1, 2021'; 33-33-10-04 (Illness or environment health complaint investigation) and 33-33-10-05 (Infectious disease) printed in full, 'History: Effective January 1, 2020', General Authority NDCC 23-01-03(3), Law Implemented NDCC 19-02.1, 23-09.5-02(9). PDF downloaded HTTP 200, 48,528 bytes. https://ndlegis.gov/information/acdata/pdf/33-33-10.pdf · North Dakota Department of Health, rule-change filing creating N.D.A.C. ch. 33-33-10 (adopted 2019, effective January 1, 2020) — full text of the definitions, the excluded-products list at 33-33-10-02 and the safe-handling rule at -03 as they stood before the court challenge and the 2021 repeal. Used in this fiche only to describe what was struck, never as current law. https://ndlegis.gov/files/rule-changes/changes/doh100219changes.pdf · N.D. Admin Code 33-33-10-02 (Cornell LII mirror) — corroborating the excluded-products list, the General Authority NDCC 23-01-03(3) / Law Implemented NDCC 23-09.5 citation and the adoption note 'Administrative Rules Supplement 375, January 2020, effective January 1, 2020'. https://www.law.cornell.edu/regulations/north-dakota/N-D-A-C-33-33-10-02 · North Dakota Health and Human Services, Food and Lodging — Cottage Food page: describes the Cottage Foods Act (effective August 1, 2017 via HB 1433) as allowing sales of certain homemade foods directly to customers for home use, 'without license or inspection fees', with a Consumer Advisory Notice and complaint contact; agency contact 600 East Boulevard Ave, Bismarck, ND 58505-0250, (701) 328-2310. https://www.hhs.nd.gov/health/food-and-lodging/cottage-food · North Dakota Office of State Tax Commissioner, 'Sales Tax: Grocery Stores, Convenience Stores, & Delicatessens Guideline' — food and food ingredients for domestic home consumption exempt; prepared food for immediate consumption, candy and soft drinks taxable; nontaxable list expressly including bakery items and 'Jams, jellies and preserves'. PDF downloaded HTTP 200, 193,727 bytes. https://www.tax.nd.gov/sites/www/files/documents/guidelines/business/sales-use/gl-22062-1.pdf · North Dakota Office of State Tax Commissioner, 'Sales Tax: Restaurants Guideline' — 'Sales of food products which are prepared for immediate consumption are subject to sales tax even though such products are packaged or wrapped and are sold on a take-out or to-go basis. However, bulk items not purchased for immediate consumption are not taxable. Examples of bulk items are whole pies or cakes, large quantities of bakery items and bulk ice cream.' PDF downloaded HTTP 200, 256,028 bytes. https://www.tax.nd.gov/sites/www/files/documents/guidelines/business/sales-use/gl-21809.pdf · North Dakota Department of Agriculture, 'Raw milk sales now legal, limited to fluid milk' — announcement of the 2023 change under N.D.C.C. § 4.1-25-40.1 (HB 1515, 2023): a farm may sell raw milk directly to the end consumer for personal consumption; fluid milk only; no sales to wholesalers or retail stores; in-state only; no donation. https://www.ndda.nd.gov/news/raw-milk-sales-now-legal-limited-fluid-milk · House Bill No. 1131, 69th Legislative Assembly (2025) bill overview — 'AN ACT to amend and reenact section 4.1-25-40.1 of the North Dakota Century Code, relating to the sale of raw milk products; and to provide a penalty'; status Passed; Governor signed March 26, 2025. Title and status only; the enacted text was not read. https://ndlegis.gov/assembly/69-2025/regular/bill-overview/bo1131.html · S.L. 2021 — Senate Bill No. 2119, 67th Legislative Assembly, creating N.D.C.C. § 23-09-16.1 (food and lodging establishment licence renewal, expiry December 31, 50% late fee) and amending §§ 23-09-16 and 23-09-18. Read for the licensed-establishment exit route described in sales_cap. https://ndlegis.gov/assembly/67-2021/regular/documents/21-8122-02000.pdf · 66th (2019) and 67th (2021) Legislative Assembly session-law topic volumes, complete sets downloaded from https://ndlegis.gov/assembly/66-2019/session-laws/ and https://ndlegis.gov/assembly/67-2021/session-laws/ (118 PDFs) and searched for '23-09.5' and 'cottage food': no hits. Negative verification that neither the 2019 nor the 2021 Legislative Assembly amended ch. 23-09.5. · North Dakota Food Freedom, legislative timeline — 2017 HB 1433 (raw dairy removed in the House), 2019 SB 2269 died in conference over low-acid canned and refrigerated foods, 2020 district court ruling striking the Department of Health rules, 2023 HB 1515 raw milk, 2025 HB 1131 raw milk products. Advocacy source, used for chronology only and corroborated against primary documents wherever it touches an operative rule. https://ndfoodfreedom.com/timeline · Contemporaneous reporting and Institute for Justice material on the 2020 litigation (Judge Cynthia M. Feland; plaintiffs Danielle Mickelson, Lydia Gessele, Lonnie Thompson, Summer Joy Peterson, Naina Agarwal; rules declared invalid and enjoined; appeal later withdrawn) — https://ij.org/case/north-dakota-food-freedom/ and https://www.kxnet.com/news/local-news/north-dakota-court-overturns-health-department-restrictions-on-cottage-food-act/ . Both returned HTTP 403 on direct fetch; these details are taken from search-result summaries and are flagged as unverified. The OUTCOME is independently confirmed from the official administrative code repeal note.