Indiana cottage food label requirements

The other thing to know first: Indiana used to confine home based vendors to farmers markets and roadside stands. That ended on July 1, 2022. You can now sell by phone and over the internet and ship to customers by mail or carrier. A large amount of Indiana cottage food content still says otherwise.

The label Indiana actually requires

IC 16-42-5.3-5 requires a label on packaged food, or a sign displayed with unpackaged food, containing all of the following:

1. The name and address of the producer. Your primary residence, where the food was made. Not a PO box.
2. The common or usual name of the food product. "Pumpkin bread," not "Hoosier Harvest Loaf."
3. The ingredients, in descending order by predominance by weight. Sub-ingredients count. If your chocolate chips contain soy lecithin, it goes on the label.
4. The net weight or volume, by standard measure or numerical count.
5. The date the food product was processed.
6. The Indiana disclaimer, word for word, in at least 10-point type.

There's a seventh obligation that isn't printed on the package: if you sell online, IC 16-42-5.3-5 requires you to post the label of each food product on your website. That one gets missed constantly by people who moved to online sales after the 2022 rewrite.

The statute doesn't separately require an allergen declaration. Add one anyway. The federal nine are 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 parenthetically in the ingredient list or in a "Contains" statement, and name tree nuts and fish by species: "pecans," not "tree nuts."

The exact disclaimer wording

This product is home produced and processed and the production area has not been inspected by the Indiana Department of Health. NOT FOR RESALE.

Sentence case for the first sentence, all caps for "NOT FOR RESALE," both sentences ending in a period, minimum 10-point type per IC 16-42-5.3-5.

One caution worth the sentence: the Indiana Department of Health's own Home Based Vendor Handbook prints a slightly different version, with a comma after "processed" and the older agency name "State Department of Health." The statute is what controls, and the statute says "Indiana Department of Health" with no comma. Print the statutory version.

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.

Indiana has no cap, so trigger three never fires on revenue alone. Triggers one and five are what bite here, and five is unusually common because Indiana's 2022 rewrite pushed a lot of home based vendors onto the internet. Amazon requires images showing the panel, ingredient list, allergen declaration, manufacturer info, and net quantity regardless of what IC 16-42-5.3 says — and a listing carrying "NOT FOR RESALE" on the label is a separate problem on a marketplace.

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 Indiana

Indiana uses an exclusion model built on one line. IC 16-42-5.3-4 says a home based vendor may sell only a food product that is made, grown, or raised at the individual's primary residence, prepared using proper sanitary procedures, not resold, and not a time temperature control for safety food. The 2024 amendment (P.L. 151-2024) swapped the old "potentially hazardous food" language for the current TCS standard. If it doesn't need refrigeration for safety, it's in scope. There is no approved list in the statute.

The Indiana Department of Health publishes a working list in its Home Based Vendor Handbook, updated Summer 2025.

Allowed, per IDOH: breads, cakes, cookies, quick breads and pastries; jams, jellies, and preserves from high-acid fruits; canned acid fruits in glass; hard candy, fudge, chocolate, caramel apples; dried and dehydrated fruits and vegetables; chips, crackers, granola, trail mix; roasted coffee beans, dried tea, dried herbs; nut butters; honey; dried pasta; freeze-dried products.

Prohibited:

Note that Indiana bans pickled and fermented products, which several neighboring states allow. If your product is on that list, home based vendor status is not your path. You'll need a licensed commercial or shared-use kitchen and a food establishment permit, 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

This is the section where stale Indiana content does the most damage. IC 16-42-5.3-4 permits food to be "sold in person, by telephone, or through the Internet" and "delivered to the end consumer in person, by mail, or by a third party carrier." Farmers markets and roadside stands were the only lawful channels before HEA 1149 took effect on July 1, 2022. They are now two options among several.

Three conditions come with shipping, all from IC 16-42-5.3-6. You may not ship or deliver to a consumer located outside Indiana — that limit is explicit in the statute, not just in agency guidance. You must ship in a sealed package that lets the buyer tell whether it's been tampered with. And you must keep a record of every shipping or delivery address for at least one year after the sale, produced to the state department on request.

Interstate is a no twice over: Indiana bars it by statute, and separately, the moment a product crosses a state line it enters interstate commerce and FDA has authority over the whole operation that made it. A state exemption cannot exempt you from federal law.

The cap, the permit, and the certificate

The certificate requirement is the one piece of paperwork Indiana does impose, and it also arrived with the 2022 rewrite. IC 16-42-5.3-7 requires a home based vendor to obtain a food handler certificate from a certificate issuer accredited by the American National Standards Institute, provide a copy to the local health department in the county where the vendor's residence is located, and provide a copy to the state department or an end consumer on request. ServSafe Food Handler is the common route; Purdue Extension reports these certificates run three years.

Nothing else is required. No permit fee, no annual renewal with the state, no inspection of your kitchen, and no dollar ceiling on what you sell.

New in 2026: the homestead vendor category

Indiana passed HEA 1424, signed March 12, 2026 as P.L. 163-2026 and effective July 1, 2026. It does not amend IC 16-42-5.3. It creates a separate chapter, IC 16-42-5.4, for "homestead vendors" and small farm vendors: exempt from specified food establishment health regulations, allowed to sell certain meat products, required to disclose through signage and labeling, and capped at $1.5 million in annual gross sales.

That's a different category with different rules, not an expansion of home based vendor status. IDOH issued a signed guidance memorandum on homestead and small farm vendors dated May 26, 2026, which confirms the effective date, the $1.5 million ceiling, and — the part that matters if you're already selling — states plainly that "all statutes for home-based vendors (IC 16-42-5.3) remain in force." Nothing you do today under IC 16-42-5.3 changed on July 1. If you make something IC 16-42-5.3 prohibits, read the memo and ask IDOH whether the homestead vendor chapter reaches it before you assume a commercial kitchen is your only option. The memo is linked below.

When you outgrow cottage food

There's no revenue cap to cross, so Indiana makers leave the exemption for other reasons. Any of these ends it:

• You want to sell to a shop, café, or grocery. "NOT FOR RESALE" is on your label for a reason.
• You want to ship to a customer in Ohio or Illinois.
• You want to make cheesecake, jerky, salsa, or anything fermented.
• You want to say "high protein" on the bag.
• You list on Amazon and they want a panel image.

Whichever comes 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 picked. A discrete unit holding 200% to 300% of the RACC needs a dual-column panel.

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 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 in the same section: not an importer, fewer than 10 full-time equivalent employees, fewer than 10,000 units a year, and you file nothing at all.

The exemption is void — filed or not — for any product carrying a nutrient content claim, a health claim, or other nutrition information, on the label, in labeling, or in advertising. See FDA's food labeling guide.

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. Compare that to $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

Indiana has moved this area of law three times in four years: HEA 1149 in 2022 opened up sales channels and added the certificate requirement, P.L. 151-2024 changed the food standard to TCS, and P.L. 163-2026 created the homestead vendor category. Check before you print:

• Indiana Department of Health — Home Based Vendor Handbook
• IC 16-42-5.3, full chapter text
• IC 16-42-5.3-5, labeling
• HEA 1424 (2026), enrolled text
• IDOH — homestead and small farm vendor guidance memorandum, May 26, 2026

Last reviewed August 4, 2026. If you're reading this much later, confirm the disclaimer wording and the sales channels before relying on either.