Utah cottage food label requirements

Utah gives you two routes out of a home kitchen, and they are very different. The first is cottage food registration with the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food: a $100 registration, a food handler permit, a kitchen inspection, and a full label, in exchange for the right to sell to stores. The second is the Home Consumption and Homemade Food Act, Utah Code §§ 4-5a-102 through 4-5a-105: no registration, no inspection, a three-part label, and direct sales only. Neither has a sales cap. 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 Utah actually requires

Section 4-5-501(4)(c) requires a cottage food operation to "package a cottage food product with a label, as specified by the department in rule." The rule is R70-560-6, and it lists:

1. The name of the food, as federal regulation specifies or, if none does, its common or usual name.
2. The ingredients in descending order of predominance by weight, for any food with two or more ingredients. Sub-ingredients count.
3. The food source of each major food allergen, unless it's already in the ingredient's common name. 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. Tree nuts, fish, and shellfish must be named by species — "almonds," not "tree nuts."
4. An accurate net quantity of contents.
5. The name and place of business of the cottage food operation.
6. The telephone number of the cottage food operation.
7. Nutrition labeling, unless the product qualifies for an exemption. This is the line that surprises people. Utah's rule points straight at the federal exemptions, which is how a cottage producer avoids the panel: 21 CFR 101.9(j)(18) covers you as long as you make no nutrient content claim.
8. The words "Home Produced." UDAF's own page lists it as a required element.

The exact disclaimer wording

Home Produced

R70-560-6(2)(h) requires "the words 'Home Produced' in bold and conspicuous 12-point type on the principal display panel." Two words, capitalized, on the front of the package, bold, at least 12 point. Don't expand it into a sentence and don't tuck it on the back. The principal display panel is the face a shopper sees on a shelf, which matters in Utah because registered cottage products can sit on a store shelf.

The Home Consumption and Homemade Food Act label

If you sell under chapter 5a instead, § 4-5a-104(3) requires three things on the product:

• The producer's name and address.
• A disclosure statement that the product is "not for resale" and "processed and prepared without state or local inspection." The statute gives the substance, not a fixed sentence. UDAF's page renders it as: Not for Resale – Processed and prepared without the benefit of state or local inspection.
• An allergen statement saying whether the food "contains, or was prepared in a location that also handles, common allergens including milk, soy, wheat, eggs, peanuts or tree nuts, fish, or shellfish." Sesame isn't in Utah's list; add it anyway.

Sales made up only of producers under 18 are exempt from that label under § 4-5a-104(7). Everyone else must also, under § 4-5a-104(6), tell the buyer the food "is not certified, licensed, regulated, or inspected by the state or any county or city."

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.

Utah is the rare state where trigger four doesn't automatically end the exemption: UDAF lets registered cottage products be sold "to stores for resale" inside Utah. The trigger that bites instead is number one, because R70-560-6 already says "nutrition labeling, unless the product qualifies for an exemption," and the federal exemption dies the moment you put "sugar free" on a jar of jam. There is no cap, so trigger three never arrives on its own.

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 Utah

The two routes use opposite models. Cottage food registration is an approved-list model: § 4-5-501 limits it to "nonpotentially hazardous" foods, UDAF reviews every recipe, and refrigerated products are out. The Home Consumption and Homemade Food Act is an exclusion model: any "homemade food product" prepared in a private home kitchen is in, except the items § 4-5a-105 carves out.

Allowed under cottage food registration, per UDAF:

• Baked goods cooked by dry heat, with no cream, custard, or egg-based frostings or fillings
• Cereals, trail mixes, granola; nuts, nut mixes, and brittles; popcorn and popcorn balls
• Dried acidic fruits (some low-acid fruits only if freeze-dried); dry herbs and seasoning mixes, no medicinal herbs or supplements
• Hard candies, freeze-dried candies, cotton candy; vanilla extract
• Jams, jellies, and preserves, but not fruit butter or sugar-free versions
• Raw honey and creamed honey; roasted coffee beans; vinegar and strained flavored vinegars
• Repackaged non-TCS foods

Prohibited under cottage food registration, per UDAF and the application form:

Prohibited under the Home Consumption and Homemade Food Act, § 4-5a-105:

If your product is on a prohibited list for both routes, cottage food law is not your path. You'll need a licensed commercial or shared-use kitchen and a UDAF food establishment registration, 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 Homemade Food Act writes its boundary into the statute: the exemption applies only if the food is "produced and sold within the state" and "sold directly to an informed final consumer" for "personal or home consumption." Raw, unprocessed fruit and vegetables are the one thing you can sell to a restaurant or store under it.

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 cottage route runs through UDAF: application, a written recipe and a label for every product, an invoice, a certificate, then an inspection. Section 4-5-501(3) bars UDAF from requiring commercial surfaces or equipment, a separate kitchen, or plan review, and § 4-5-501(6) keeps local health departments out except to investigate an outbreak. Confirm the renewal interval with UDAF when you register.

The homemade route skips UDAF entirely. Section 4-5a-105(3) says the department "may not, by rule, impose an additional limit, requirement, or restriction" on a producer under the act.

When you outgrow cottage food

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

• A store outside Utah, or any customer outside Utah, wants to buy from you.
• A restaurant wants to use your product as an ingredient.
• You want to make cheesecake, salsa, or jerky under the registered route.
• You want to say "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 Utah has amended the Home Consumption and Homemade Food Act in 2023, 2025, and 2026. The latest, SB 217 ("Local Food Amendments," effective May 6, 2026), added the designated representative, dropped the farmers market signage rule, and repealed the act's short-title section. Before you print labels, check the current rules with the agency directly:

• UDAF — Cottage Food Production
• UDAF — Home Consumption and Homemade Food Act
• Utah State University Extension — Utah's Value-Added Food Processing Options (Feb 2026)
• Utah Code § 4-5-501: Cottage food operations and § 4-5a-104, home producer direct sales
• SB 217, 2026 General Session, enrolled (PDF)

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.