Missouri cottage food label requirements

The allowed-food list has three entries: baked goods, canned jams or jellies, and dried herbs or herb mixes. And the old $50,000 cap is gone: House Bill 1697 removed it and opened in-state internet sales, effective August 28, 2022.

The label Missouri actually requires

RSMo 196.298(4) sets the floor: name, address, and a not-inspected statement. DHSS fills in the rest in its Home-Based Kitchen Food Protection Guidance (revised March 2026). The label must be legible and include:

1. The full name and address of the cottage food production operation. Your home address; Missouri has no registration number to substitute.
2. The common name of the food. "Blackberry jam," not "Ozark Sunrise."
3. The ingredient list, in descending order by weight. Sub-ingredients count. If your chocolate chips contain soy lecithin, that has to show up.
4. The net weight of the food.
5. A list of any allergens in the food. Federal law covers nine: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame. Sesame joined the list under the FASTER Act on January 1, 2023. You can declare them parenthetically inside the ingredient list or in a separate "Contains" statement. Tree nuts, fish, and shellfish must be named by species — "pecans," not "tree nuts."
6. The not-inspected statement.

The exact disclaimer wording

Missouri does not prescribe a word-for-word sentence. The statute requires "a statement that the food is not inspected by the department or local health department" (RSMo 196.298(4)); DHSS describes it as "a statement that the product is prepared in a kitchen that is not subject to inspection by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services." Since there is no official string, track the statute's own words. This is our suggestion, not a DHSS sentence:

This food is not inspected by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services or a local health department.

Don't shorten it to "homemade."

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.

With no cap, the short food list is what gets Missouri makers: the day you want to sell salsa, a cream pie, or a "sugar free" jam, you're into a commercial kitchen. DHSS excludes "Sugar Free" jams outright, so the claim that triggers a federal panel also ends the state exemption.

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 Missouri

Missouri uses an approved-list model, and the list has three entries. If it isn't one of these, it isn't a cottage food.

Allowed under RSMo 196.298:

Prohibited, per DHSS guidance:

Where local codes allow, the Missouri Food Code separately lets "individual stands" sell items like fruit butters, honey, and dry mixes under the same label rules plus a point-of-sale placard.

If your product is on that prohibited list, cottage food law is not your path. You'll need a licensed commercial or shared-use kitchen inspected by your local public health agency, and once you're operating out of one you're a food manufacturer under federal law — which means full labeling, including a Nutrition Facts panel unless you qualify for the small business exemption below.

Where you can sell

The statute covers sales "only directly to consumers"; DHSS says wholesaled foods "no longer are exempted." Internet sales, added in 2022, carry a statutory boundary: an operation "shall not sell any foods described in this section through the internet unless both the cottage food production operation and the purchaser are located in this state" (RSMo 196.298(5)).

Interstate is a hard no everywhere, and the reason is jurisdictional rather than arbitrary: the moment a product crosses a state line it enters interstate commerce and FDA has authority over the whole operation that made it. Your state's cottage food exemption cannot exempt you from federal law. If you ship to one customer in another state, you have stepped outside the exemption for that shipment.

The cap, the permit, and the training

RSMo 196.298(3) bars local health departments from regulating your production, but not from enforcing zoning or business-license ordinances at the point of sale.

When you outgrow cottage food

Missouri has no cap, so the exits are product and channel:

• You want to make anything beyond baked goods, jams, and dried herbs.
• A shop wants to stock you.
• You want to ship to a customer in Arkansas.
• You want to say "high protein" or "sugar free" on the jar.
• 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

Cottage food law changes most legislative sessions, and Missouri has moved once, in 2022; a broader rewrite (HB 3108) was introduced in 2026 and had not passed when this page was reviewed. Check the current rules with the agency directly:

• Missouri DHSS — Home-Based Kitchen Food Protection Guidance (PDF)
• Missouri DHSS — Consumer Food Safety FAQ
• RSMo 196.298: Revisor of Missouri, Section 196.298

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