South dakota cottage food label requirements

South Dakota calls this "home-processed food" rather than cottage food, and the Department of Health confirms there are "no monetary limits on the amount of sales." The trade-off is a strict in-person sales rule and a longer label than most states ask for. There are five situations where the answer on the panel flips and you do need one. They're below, after the part you actually came for.

The label South Dakota actually requires

Section 34-18-37 says food prepared at a residence "may not be sold unless it has a label that includes the following information":

1. Name of the product.
2. Name of the producer.
3. Physical address of production. Your home address. South Dakota offers no registration number or other substitute.
4. Mailing address of the producer. If it's the same as the physical address, it still has to be on the label.
5. Telephone number of the producer.
6. Date the product was made or processed.
7. Ingredients. The statute doesn't say "in descending order by weight," but federal law does, and that's how you'll need it the day you leave cottage food. Sub-ingredients count.
8. A directive to keep refrigerated or frozen, for the time-and-temperature-controlled foods allowed under § 34-18-36.1 (cheesecake, cream pies, pesto, fermented foods, frozen produce).
9. The South Dakota disclaimer, word for word.

A separate allergen declaration is not on the list. The disclaimer below warns that the kitchen "may also process" eight allergens, which is not the same as telling the customer what's in the jar. Federal law covers nine: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame, which joined under the FASTER Act on January 1, 2023 and is missing from South Dakota's wording. Declare them in the ingredient list or a "Contains" statement, with tree nuts named by species, even though the state doesn't ask.

The exact disclaimer wording

This product was not produced in a commercial kitchen. It has been home-processed in a kitchen that may also process common food allergens such as tree nuts, peanuts, eggs, soy, wheat, milk, fish, and crustacean shellfish.

That is § 34-18-37(9), two sentences, sentence case, as last amended by SL 2022, ch. 106. The statute sets no type size and no placement rule.

Print both sentences. Don't drop the allergen sentence because your kitchen has never seen a peanut, and don't add sesame inside the quoted statement. If you want to flag sesame, do it in your own allergen line. Inspectors and market managers read this string literally.

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.

South Dakota has no cap, so trigger three never arrives by itself. What ends the exemption here is trigger four in its broadest form: the Department of Health treats any indirect sale, including a retail store or an internet sale, as something that "would require a state license." The first wholesale account or the first online storefront is the moment you become a licensed food establishment.

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 South Dakota

South Dakota uses a category model with a training gate. Since HB 1322 (SL 2022, ch. 106), § 34-18-35 exempts anyone selling non-temperature-controlled food prepared at a residence, home-processed canned goods, baked goods, and the higher-risk foods in § 34-18-36.1 from licensing. The higher-risk foods require a food safety course first.

Allowed, no training required:

• Non-temperature-controlled foods made at home: cookies, breads, cakes, candies, lefse, nuts, grains, seeds, dry mixes, roasted coffee, granola

Allowed with DOH-approved training every five years (or, for canned goods, written recipe verification from a processing authority):

• Home-canned goods with a pH of 4.6 or less or a water activity of 0.85 or less: jams, jellies, salsas, pickles, barbecue sauce
• Non-heat-processed fermented foods such as kombucha, kimchi, and sauerkraut, kept at or below 41°F
• Kuchen and baked goods needing temperature control, including soft pies, cheesecake, custard- and cream-filled baked goods, and sauces and pesto, kept at or below 41°F
• Home-processed frozen fruit and produce, kept at or below 0°F

Prohibited or outside the exemption:

If your product is on that list, home-processed food law is not your path in South Dakota. You'll need a licensed commercial or shared-use kitchen and a Department of Health food service license, 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 34-18-38 is the gate. The exemption applies only if the food "is sold in the seller's physical presence" at the seller's primary residence, a farmers market, a roadside stand, or another temporary sale venue, and "the seller, or a person residing at the seller's primary residence, personally delivers the food to the buyer at the completion of the sale." You can hand a pie to a customer at your door. You cannot put it in a box at the post office, and a spouse or roommate can deliver it but a courier can't.

The Department of Health's farmers market guidance says the same thing in plainer words: products "cannot be sold wholesale (indirect). Examples of indirect sale may include sales from a retail store or via the internet. Indirect sales would require a state license." Advertising online is fine. Completing the sale online isn't.

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 training requirement is the only paperwork. Section 34-18-36 says a producer selling canned goods "shall, every five years, complete food safety training approved by the department," and § 34-18-36.1 extends that to the refrigerated and fermented categories. For canned goods only, you can skip the course and instead keep written verification of each recipe from a third-party processing authority who confirms the processing method and the pH or water activity threshold. SDSU Extension runs the approved online course and will review canned-product recipes.

Two things people miss. First, sales tax applies to home-processed food, and the Department of Revenue, not Health, handles that. Second, anything sold by weight has to be weighed on a legal-for-trade NTEP scale certified by the Office of Weights and Measures every other year.

When you outgrow cottage food

There is no dollar ceiling in South Dakota, so the exits are about what and how. Any of these ends the exemption:

• A store, café, or consignment shop wants to stock you.
• You want to take orders and ship, or sell through a website.
• You want to make jerky, juice, take-and-bake pizza, or low-acid canned vegetables.
• You want to say "low sugar" 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 South Dakota has moved in 2020 and again in 2022, when HB 1322 opened the door to canned, fermented, and refrigerated foods. Bills to loosen the labeling and sales rules and to allow home-processed poultry and pork were introduced in 2025 and died in committee. Before you print labels, check the current rules with the agency directly:

• South Dakota Department of Health — Farmers Market Guidance for Market Managers and Vendors (PDF)
• South Dakota Department of Health — Farmers Markets
• SDCL 34-18-37: Label requirements and SDCL 34-18-38, exemption from licensure
• SDSU Extension — South Dakota Cottage Home Processing Food Safety

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.