Confita
What Montana actually decides
The Local Food Choice Act is an exemption rather than a programme. No licensure, permitting, certification, packaging, labelling, testing, sampling or inspection may be required of a homemade food producer selling to an informed end consumer. Montana publishes no category list anywhere in the Act, so the boundary is definitional: any food or food product prepared in a private home.
Two things still catch people, and the first is the one to plan around. A privately operated farmers market may require a licence, registration or permit from the local health authority as a condition of selling there. The Act stops agencies from demanding one; it does not stop a private market from doing so. The health department makes this point twice, which suggests it comes up.
The second is that Montana still runs a separate registered Cottage Food programme alongside this one. If you find guidance describing registration, check which regime it belongs to before acting on it.
Food needing time or temperature control is allowed here, which is unusually open. The exclusions are meat and meat products however they were processed, subject to a small poultry carve-out, alcohol including rum-filled candy, and anything infused with THC or marijuana. Preparation has to happen in the private home kitchen, so assembling at a market needs a retail food licence or a temporary permit.
One caveat on the sourcing. The agency's own page did not spell out the training requirement, so those came from the statute and secondary sources rather than from Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services directly. Everything else on this page was read off an official source on September 13, 2026. If one of those points decides your case, ask them.
The short version
What you can sell in Montana
Straight from the official record. Read these as categories rather than a menu, because one recipe can cross the line on its own: a filling that needs refrigeration, a pH that needs testing, or a process that needs an authority to sign it off.
- Any food or food product prepared in a private home. Montana publishes no category list anywhere in the Act, so this list is definitional rather than enumerated
- Food that needs time or temperature control, which the farmers market statute deems not potentially hazardous for market purposes
- Milk and cream from a small dairy: no more than five lactating cows, ten lactating goats or ten lactating sheep
- Poultry and poultry products where you slaughter fewer than 1,000 birds a year, subject to the federal exemption and its recordkeeping
- Raw, unprocessed fruit and vegetables
- Aquaculture products, added in 2025
- Food containing CBD. The health department states it has no regulatory oversight here, because producers under this Act sit outside the state food and drug law and the food additive rules
- The health department's own examples: jams, jellies, dried fruit, dry mixes, baked goods
What is outside the rule
If your product is on this list, the answer is not "ask nicely". It is a different licence, a different kitchen, or both.
- Meat and meat products used in preparing homemade food, however they were processed, subject only to the under-1,000-poultry carve-out
- Alcoholic and alcohol-infused products, rum-filled candy included
- THC and marijuana-infused products, which need a licence under the marijuana regulation act
- Dietary supplements and anything marketed as a drug
- Any product carrying a health claim, on labels, advertisements, social media or spoken
- Donated milk at a traditional community social event
- Anything crossing state lines
Where you are allowed to sell it
The researched record lists direct sales, farmers markets, delivery.
One channel being open does not open the rest. Shipping, delivery and wholesale each turn on the product and where it is going, so check the route you actually plan to use.
