Nevada cottage food label requirements

Two things make Nevada confusing right now. The old statute, NRS 446.866, was repealed in 2025 and its cottage food rules moved to NRS 580.600 under SB 466, which took effect July 1, 2025 and raised the cap from $35,000. Then AB 352, signed in June 2025, rewrites the program again on July 1, 2027: licensing moves to the Nevada Department of Agriculture, and internet orders and mail delivery become legal. Until then you register with your local health district. If a guide you're reading still says $35,000, it predates both bills.

There are five situations where the answer flips and you do need a panel. They're below, after the part you actually came for.

The label Nevada actually requires

NRS 580.600(1)(c) requires a label that complies with "the federal labeling requirements set forth in 21 U.S.C. 343(w), 9 C.F.R. Part 317 and 21 C.F.R. Part 101," and 580.600(1)(d) adds the state disclaimer. Put together, every prepackaged cottage food product you sell in Nevada needs:

1. The common or usual name of the product. "Peanut brittle," not "Grandma's Gold." (21 CFR 101.3.)
2. Net quantity of contents. Weight or count, on the front panel. (21 CFR 101.105.)
3. The ingredient list, in descending order by weight. Sub-ingredients count. If your chocolate chips contain soy lecithin, that has to show up. (21 CFR 101.4.)
4. Allergen declaration. Nevada points straight at 21 U.S.C. 343(w), which is the federal allergen statute. 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 — "almonds," not "tree nuts."
5. Name and place of business of the operator. The federal rule (21 CFR 101.5) wants a street address unless it's listed in a current directory. Nevada offers no ID-number substitute under current law.
6. The Nevada disclaimer, word for word.

The exact disclaimer wording

MADE IN A COTTAGE FOOD OPERATION THAT IS NOT SUBJECT TO GOVERNMENT FOOD SAFETY INSPECTION

NRS 580.600(1)(d) requires it "printed prominently on the label for the food item." The statute sets no minimum type size; "prominently" is the whole standard, and the Southern Nevada Health District's FAQ restates it as "clearly labeled." The same wording carries over unchanged into the July 2027 law (AB 352, section 16).

Don't paraphrase it, don't shorten it to "homemade," and don't drop it to lowercase. The statute prints it in capitals, and that is how people search for it and how inspectors expect to see it.

One point of confusion worth settling. Nevada's reference to "21 C.F.R. Part 101" looks like it drags the Nutrition Facts rule in through the back door, because 101.9 lives in that part. It doesn't. Part 101 carries its own exemptions: 101.9(j)(1) covers direct-to-consumer sellers with gross sales of $500,000 or less or food sales of $50,000 or less, and 101.9(j)(18) covers small businesses generally. A Nevada cottage operation at the $100,000 cap sits inside those exemptions until the day it makes a nutrient content claim. See FDA's food labeling guide.

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.

In Nevada, trigger one is the near-term risk, and for a specific reason: the Southern Nevada Health District says sugar-free and no-sugar-added jams are not allowed as cottage food at all, so the people most tempted to print "sugar free" are the people who can't make the product at home in the first place. Trigger three is the other one to watch, because Nevada's approved-food list is short and most sauce, salsa, and refrigerated-dessert makers leave cottage food on day one.

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 Nevada

Nevada uses an approved-list model. If it isn't in NRS 580.600(7)(b), you can't make it as cottage food.

Allowed, under NRS 580.600(7)(b):

Prohibited:

Everything else. In practice that means sauces and salsas, pickles and other acidified foods (Nevada handles those under a separate "craft food" program run by the Department of Agriculture, with its own cap, not the cottage food law), meat and jerky, anything refrigerated, cheesecake and custard pies, buttercreams made with egg, fresh-fruit toppings, beverages, and anything containing cannabis or hemp.

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, 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

Under current law the sale has to be "an in-person transaction that does not involve selling the food item by telephone or via the Internet" (NRS 580.600(1)(a)), and the buyer has to be a natural person buying for their own consumption, not for resale (580.600(1)(b)). The Southern Nevada Health District adds that a permitted food establishment can't carry your product, because cottage food is food from an unapproved source. A website is fine for advertising; it just can't have a checkout or a shipping option.

AB 352 changes this on July 1, 2027. Section 16 allows a sale "by means of an in-person transaction or a transaction by telephone or via the Internet," fulfilled "in person, by mail or through a food delivery service platform." Until that date, the old rule stands.

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

The cap is gross sales, not profit. NRS 580.600(6) requires the Department of Agriculture to adjust it each fiscal year and publish the adjusted figure on its website by September 30; the adjusted 2026-27 figure was not posted when this page was reviewed, so confirm the current number on the Department of Agriculture site before you get close to it. Fees elsewhere differ by district: Carson City Health and Human Services and the Central Nevada Health District register their own counties, and the Department of Agriculture's Food Program covers everywhere else. The statute caps any fee at the authority's actual cost of keeping the registry.

Two quirks. A cottage food operation must be a "natural person," which the Southern Nevada Health District reads as no partners and no employees. And cities and counties can't ban cottage operations (NRS 580.600(2)), though they can still require a business license.

When you outgrow cottage food

Crossing $100,000 is not the only way out of cottage food. Any of these ends the exemption:

• You hit the sales cap.
• You want to sell wholesale or into grocery.
• You want to ship out of state.
• You want to make something on the prohibited list.
• You want to say "high protein" on the bag.

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 Nevada has moved twice in 2025 alone, with a second wave of changes scheduled for July 1, 2027. Before you print labels, check the current rules with the agency directly:

• Southern Nevada Health District — Cottage Food Operations and its Cottage Food FAQ
• Nevada Department of Agriculture — Food Safety Program
• NRS 580.600: Nevada Revised Statutes Chapter 580
• AB 352 (2025), enrolled text and SB 466 (2025), enrolled text

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