Wyoming cottage food label requirements

Wyoming has no cottage food law in the usual sense. It has the Wyoming Food Freedom Act, W.S. 11-49-101 through 11-49-104, passed in 2015 and widened almost every session since. It is the most permissive homemade-food statute in the country: refrigerated foods, raw milk, eggs, poultry, rabbit, farm-raised fish, and sales through a designated agent or a retail shop are all inside it. 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 Wyoming actually requires

The Food Freedom Act does not require a label on a direct sale. What it requires is in W.S. 11-49-103, and it depends on where the sale happens:

1. Inform the end consumer, on every sale, that the food "is not certified, labeled, licensed, packaged, regulated or inspected." That's § 11-49-103(e). The statute does not say how. The Wyoming Department of Agriculture's Q&A says the same: the act "does not state how the producer shall inform the end consumer," only that you must, and that failing to do so means you are "no longer operating under the WFFA" and fall under the regular Wyoming Food Safety Rule. A sign, a card, or a sticker all work. The customer must be an "informed end consumer" under § 11-49-102(a)(v): the last person to buy it, who doesn't resell it, and who has been told it isn't licensed, regulated, or inspected.
2. The Wyoming retail statement, word for word, if a third-party retail shop or grocery store sells your non-potentially hazardous food or dairy. Under § 11-49-103(k) the product also can't sit on the same shelf or display as food from a licensed establishment, and under (d) the store must post a sign saying the homemade food has not been inspected.
3. A "not for sale" label on animal-share meat. Meat delivered under an animal share must carry or come with "a prominent warning statement that the meat has not been inspected," under § 11-49-104(a)(iii), plus information about the farm's herd health and processing standards.

Nothing in the act requires an ingredient list, an allergen declaration, net weight, or your name and address on a direct sale. Most producers add them anyway. The federal allergen list is milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame, with tree nuts, fish, and shellfish named by species, and the retail statement below says "may contain allergens" without saying which.

The exact disclaimer wording

this food was made in a home kitchen, is not regulated or inspected and may contain allergens

That is the statement in § 11-49-103(k), which applies to "sales of non-potentially hazardous food and dairy products at a retail location or grocery store." The statute requires the product to be "clearly and prominently labeled" with it; it sets no type size, and it is written in lower case without end punctuation. Capitalizing the first letter and adding a period is a normal typographic choice. Rewording it is not.

For a direct sale at a farmers market, your home, or a delivery, no statement is prescribed. Using this same sentence on a sticker is the simplest way to satisfy § 11-49-103(e), because it says exactly what the statute wants the customer to know.

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.

Wyoming is the rare state where trigger four doesn't automatically bite, because the act lets a retail shop or grocery store sell your shelf-stable food and dairy as a third-party seller. What gets Wyoming producers instead is trigger one: with no label rules at all, people write "high protein" and "sugar free" on jars without thinking about it, and that claim is a federal matter the act cannot waive. The other common exit is the state line.

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 Wyoming

Wyoming uses an exclusion model. "Homemade" means food "prepared or processed in a private home kitchen, that is not licensed, inspected or regulated," and the act covers both non-potentially hazardous food and potentially hazardous food that needs refrigeration. If it isn't carved out, it's allowed.

Allowed:

• Non-potentially hazardous foods: jams, pickled vegetables, hard candies, fudge, nut mixes, granola, dry soup mixes (not meat-based), coffee beans, popcorn, baked goods without dairy or meat fillings
• Potentially hazardous foods that need refrigeration: quiches, pizzas, frozen doughs, cooked vegetables and beans, cream-filled baked goods
• Eggs and dairy products, including raw milk
• Poultry you raised, if you slaughter no more than 1,000 birds a year, sell only your own, and the product is not adulterated or misbranded
• Domestic rabbit meat
• Farm-raised fish raised under Title 23, except catfish
• Live animals, and portions of live animals sold before slaughter for future delivery
• Meat through an animal share under § 11-49-104

Prohibited under § 11-49-103(c)(v):

If your product is beef, pork, lamb, or goat, the Food Freedom Act is not your path yet. You'll need a state or federally inspected processor and, for your own products, a licensed commercial kitchen. Once you're in 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 in-state rule is written into the statute twice: transactions shall "occur only in Wyoming" and "not involve interstate commerce." The Department of Agriculture's Q&A adds that out-of-state producers can't sell into Wyoming under the act either. A 2026 interim committee draft would let restaurants and coffee shops use homemade food as an ingredient; it is a draft for the 2027 session, not law.

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 lives in the definition of "producer" in § 11-49-102(a)(vi): a person who "does not produce more than two hundred fifty thousand (250,000) individual food or drink products annually and does not exceed two hundred fifty thousand dollars ($250,000.00) in gross revenue annually." Exceed either number and you are no longer a producer, so the act no longer covers you. Both figures are fixed in statute, not indexed.

The act also bars the Department of Agriculture from adopting any inspection standard "more stringent than a standard established by the United States department of agriculture."

When you outgrow cottage food

Crossing $250,000 is not the only way out of the Food Freedom Act. Any of these ends the exemption:

• You pass 250,000 units or $250,000 in gross revenue.
• You want to sell to a customer in Colorado, Montana, or anywhere else out of state.
• You want a restaurant to use your product as an ingredient.
• You want to sell beef, pork, lamb, or goat you raised, before the federal change the 2025 amendment is waiting on.
• 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 Wyoming has amended the Food Freedom Act in 2017, 2020, 2021, 2023 (SF 102, effective July 1, 2023, which opened egg and dairy sales to any person and third-party retail) and 2025 (SF 120, effective July 1, 2025, the contingent meat provision). Lawmakers spent 2026 debating further changes after an enforcement dispute over farm-stand meat sales. Before you print labels, check the current rules with the agency directly:

• Wyoming Department of Agriculture — Food Safety, with the Food Freedom Act Q&A
• Wyoming Food Freedom Act Q&A, revised September 10, 2024 (PDF)
• W.S. 11-49-101 through 11-49-104: Title 11 Wyoming Statutes (PDF, Chapter 49)
• SF 120, 2025 General Session, Enrolled Act No. 16 (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.