Arkansas cottage food label requirements

Arkansas stopped calling this cottage food in 2021. Act 1040 of 2021 replaced the Cottage Food Act with the Food Freedom Act, § 20-57-501 through 20-57-507, effective July 28, 2021. No cap, no permit, no inspection, and you can sell through grocery stores and ship by carrier. The label is the whole state-level obligation.

The label Arkansas actually requires

Section 20-57-505(a) says the following "shall be provided to the informed end consumer":

1. The date the product was manufactured, produced, or processed.
2. The name, address, and telephone number of the producer. If you don't want that on a jar, you can request an identification number from the Arkansas Department of Agriculture and print that instead. The online application lists no fee.
3. The common or usual name of the product.
4. The ingredient list, in descending order by weight. Sub-ingredients count.
5. The Arkansas disclaimer, word for word.

The disclaimer covers allergens only generically, which is weaker than federal law. Federal law covers nine: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame, the last added by the FASTER Act on January 1, 2023. Declare them in the ingredient list or in a "Contains" statement, and name tree nuts, fish, and shellfish by species. Net weight isn't a state element either, but federal packaged-food rules expect it.

The exact disclaimer wording

This product was produced in a private residence that is exempt from state licensing and inspection. This product may contain allergens.

Section 20-57-505(a)(5) requires both sentences. The statute sets no type size, but § 20-57-504(a) ties the whole exemption to "the disclosure requirements in § 20-57-505," so an illegible statement is not a disclosure. Don't drop the allergen sentence, and don't borrow Oklahoma's version, which says "government licensing" rather than "state licensing."

Where a Nutrition Facts panel becomes required

No US state requires a full Nutrition Facts panel on cottage food products. You need one when:

1. You make a nutrient content claim — "high protein," "low sugar," "keto," "sugar free." Any of these obligates the panel that substantiates it.
2. You make a health claim — connecting your food to a disease or health condition.
3. You outgrow your state's cottage food cap and move to a commercial kitchen. At that point you are a regular food manufacturer and the cottage exemption is gone.
4. You sell wholesale or into retail. Cottage exemptions are almost universally direct-to-consumer only.
5. You sell on Amazon or another marketplace that requires a panel. Amazon's requirement is contractual, not legal, and it does not care what your state says.

Arkansas is unusual on trigger four: the act lets a "third-party vendor, including a retail shop or grocery store" sell your product with the five-element label and nothing else. But a grocery buyer putting your granola next to commercially made granola will usually ask for a panel as a condition of carrying you, even though § 20-57-504 doesn't.

Trigger one catches more people than the other four combined, and it catches them somewhere they don't expect. Under 21 CFR 101.9(j)(18), the exemption is void if the claim appears in advertising — not just on the package. Calling your granola "high protein" in an Instagram caption is enough to require the panel on the bag.

What you can and can't make in Arkansas

Arkansas uses an exclusion model. Any "non-time/temperature control for safety food" produced at your private residence qualifies, and the Arkansas Department of Health's guide sorts products into allowed, not allowed, and ask-first. Pickles and acidified vegetables qualify under § 20-57-503(5)(B) if the recipe is ADH-approved or tested to an equilibrium pH of 4.6 or less, and every batch carries a unique batch number.

Allowed, in broad strokes: baked goods without TCS fillings, candy, jams, jellies, preserves, fruit butters, dried fruit and herbs, coffee beans, nut mixes, dry mixes, granola, honey, maple syrup, sorghum, high-acid canned fruits, and pickles meeting the pH rule.

Prohibited:

If your product is on that list, cottage food law is not your path in Arkansas. Jerky makers need an ADH-permitted facility, and once you're operating out of one you're a food manufacturer under federal law — full labeling, including a Nutrition Facts panel, unless you qualify for the small business exemption below.

Where you can sell

Section 20-57-504(b) sets the terms. A transaction must be between the seller and an "informed end consumer," but the seller can be you, your agent, or a third-party vendor "including a retail shop or grocery store," and delivery can be by any of those or "a third-party carrier." Sales can occur "in Arkansas or in another state if the seller complies with all applicable federal laws."

On interstate: the statute permits it, and that is where the hard reading starts. Arkansas's exemption is a state exemption from state permitting, and § 20-57-507(a)(6) says it does not exempt you from "federal law, including any federal law prohibiting the sale of certain food items in interstate commerce." The moment a product crosses a state line it enters interstate commerce and FDA has authority over the whole operation that made it. ADH tells producers to contact FDA and the destination state before any out-of-state sale.

The cap, the permit, and the training

Three strings attach. The exemption is conditional on the disclosures: skip the label and you're an unpermitted food establishment. Section 20-57-507(a)(7) preserves ADH's authority over adulterated or misbranded food, which is the state hook for a false "sugar free" claim.

When you outgrow cottage food

With no cap, you leave Arkansas cottage food by choice. Any of these ends the exemption:

• You want to make jerky, cheesecake, or anything that needs a fridge.
• A distributor wants to buy wholesale and resell — the act requires an informed end consumer at the end of every transaction.
• You want to say "high protein" on the bag.
• You list on Amazon.

Whichever one gets you first, the day after it happens you are a food manufacturer, and food manufacturers label under 21 CFR 101.9. Your label now needs a Nutrition Facts panel with a serving size pulled from the RACC table in 21 CFR 101.12 — not a serving size you chose.

You might still be exempt, even out of a commercial kitchen

21 CFR 101.9(j)(18) exempts small businesses from the Nutrition Facts requirement if you have fewer than 100 full-time equivalent employees and sell fewer than 100,000 units in the US in a 12-month period. You have to file an annual notice with FDA to claim it. FDA is blunt about the follow-up: "FDA DOES NOT NOTIFY FIRMS WHEN IT IS TIME TO FILE A NOTICE." That's on you.

There's a smaller carve-out under the same section: if you're not an importer, have fewer than 10 full-time equivalent employees, and sell fewer than 10,000 units a year, you don't have to file anything at all.

And the exemption is void — filed or not — for any product carrying a nutrient content claim, a health claim, or other nutrition information, whether that appears on the label, in labeling, or in advertising. See FDA's labeling guidance for the full text.

If you've hit one of the triggers and need the panel itself, Nutrillius builds an FDA-compliant Nutrition Facts panel from your recipe in about a minute — $39 one time, no subscription. That's against $1,609–$1,724 for a single lab-analyzed sample at Medallion Labs, or $195 and a two-to-four week wait through a university extension lab.

Verify this yourself

Arkansas rewrote this law in 2021, and ADH's May 2026 guide still reproduces the 2021 label rule unchanged. Before you print labels, check the current rules with the agency directly:

• Arkansas Department of Health — Homemade Food Production Guidelines, May 21, 2026 (PDF)
• Arkansas Department of Agriculture — Forms and Applications, for the Food Freedom Act Business ID Number
• Ark. Code § 20-57-501 et seq.: Act 1040 of 2021, full text (PDF)

This page was last reviewed October 30, 2026. If you're reading it much later than that, verify the disclaimer wording and the prohibited-foods list before you rely on either.