New mexico cottage food label requirements

New Mexico calls it "homemade food," not cottage food, and the law is one of the lightest in the country. No permit. No registration. No fee. No cap. A food handler card, a sanitary kitchen, and the label are the whole obligation. The Act took effect July 1, 2021 under HB 177, and we found no amendment to it in the 2025 or 2026 sessions.

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 New Mexico actually requires

Section 25-12-3(C) lists the information a seller must give the consumer. Every prepackaged homemade food item you sell in New Mexico needs all of the following on the label:

1. The name, home address, telephone number, and email address of the processor. All four. New Mexico offers no ID-number substitute for the home address, and the Environment Department (NMED) expects the physical address, not a P.O. box.
2. The common or usual name of the food item. NMED's own example is "Chocolate Chip Cookies."
3. The ingredient list, in descending order by weight. Sub-ingredients count. NMED's FAQ spells it out: "butter" has to appear as "butter (cream (milk), salt)." If your chocolate chips contain soy lecithin, that has to show up.
4. Allergen declaration. New Mexico's statute does not demand a separate federal-style "Contains" line; its catch-all disclaimer below says the product "may contain allergens," and the sub-ingredient rule puts every allergen in the ingredient list anyway. Adding a "Contains" statement is still the right call, because it is what federal law requires the day you leave cottage 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 — "almonds," not "tree nuts."
5. Net weight is not on the state list. It becomes required under 21 CFR 101.105 the moment you leave cottage food, so most people add it from day one rather than redesign later.
6. The New Mexico disclaimer, word for word.

The exact disclaimer wording

This product is home produced and is exempt from state licensing and inspection. This product may contain allergens.

That is § 25-12-3(C)(4), both sentences, sentence case, each ending in a period. The statute sets no minimum type size and no placement rule.

Don't paraphrase it, don't drop the second sentence, and don't swap in another state's "cottage food operation" wording. NMED enforces by complaint, and its FAQ is explicit that a mislabeled product gets an order to correct it immediately or a fine.

Where the label has to appear

New Mexico is unusual in spelling out where this information goes, in § 25-12-3(B):

• On a label on the package, when the package is the unit of sale.
• On a label on the bulk container, when you sell from one.
• On a placard at the point of sale, when the food is neither packaged nor in a bulk container.
• On the webpage where the item is offered for sale.
• For telephone or custom orders, no label is required, but you must tell the customer the food was produced in a private residence exempt from state licensing and inspection and may contain allergens.

The webpage rule catches people. If you sell online, the full label content, including the disclaimer, has to be on the product page, not just on the jar.

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.

New Mexico has no cap, so trigger three never arrives on its own. What ends the exemption here is trigger four: the Act bars sales to restaurants, wholesalers, and distributors, and NMED says grocery stores may not buy or resell homemade food. The first shop that says yes is the day you need a commercial manufactured food permit, and a panel.

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 New Mexico

New Mexico uses an exclusion model. Anything that is not a time-and-temperature-control food, and contains no alcohol, is allowed. NMED publishes examples but says plainly that its list "does not dictate what you may or may not sell."

Allowed (NMED examples):

Prohibited (any TCS food, alcohol, or hemp product), with NMED's examples:

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 an NMED manufactured food permit, 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

Section 25-12-3(A)(2) requires that "the seller sells directly to consumers within the state, including at farmers' markets, at festivals, on the internet, at roadside stands, at the seller's home for pick-up or delivery or through mail delivery." So mail delivery is written into the statute, which puts New Mexico ahead of Texas, where you must hand-deliver. The limit is geographic: the sale has to be to a consumer within New Mexico. NMED's FAQ says it directly: homemade items "may not be sold to a restaurant, a wholesaler or distributor, or outside the state of New Mexico."

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 Act does leave two doors open. Section 25-12-3(E) lets NMED run a voluntary permit system, and 25-12-3(F) lets a class A county and home-rule city with a combined local health department run a mandatory or voluntary one, as long as it allows every food and every venue the Act allows. That clause describes Albuquerque and Bernalillo County, which operate their own food safety program outside NMED's jurisdiction. As of this review, the city's Environmental Health Department says homemade food can be sold "without a permit from either NMED, BernCo, or City of Albuquerque." Confirm that before you set up there, because the statute lets it change.

Enforcement is gentle by design. NMED must issue a written warning before any fine. Ignoring the warning is a misdemeanor, with a fine of up to $100 per violation. Local governments are otherwise preempted from regulating homemade food (§ 25-12-5), though the Act does not exempt you from business registration or tax law.

When you outgrow cottage food

With no cap, nobody outgrows New Mexico cottage food by volume. Any of these ends the exemption:

• A restaurant, grocer, or distributor wants to carry you.
• You want to ship out of state.
• You want to make salsa, jerky, cheesecake, pickles, or anything else that needs refrigeration or acidification.
• 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 New Mexico has moved once, when it replaced its old home-based processor permit with the Homemade Food Act in 2021. Before you print labels, check the current rules with the agency directly:

• New Mexico Environment Department — Homemade Food Act and the NMED Homemade Food Act FAQ (PDF)
• NMSA 1978 § 25-12-3: HB 177 (2021), approved text (PDF)
• City of Albuquerque — New Mexico Homemade Food Act if you're in Albuquerque or Bernalillo County

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