Montana cottage food law (2026): what you can sell and label

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.

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.

Paperwork, training and inspections

The researched record does not list a general permit for this tier. No state or local agency may require licensure or permitting for Local Food Choice Act sales. Two things still catch people. Privately operated farmers markets may require a licence, registration or permit from the local health authority as a condition of selling there, and the health department says so twice. And Montana still runs a registered Cottage Food Operation regime alongside this one, with a $40 one-time county registration, a submitted label for each product, a full label carrying producer name and address, product name, ingredients, net quantity and allergens, and a prescribed 11-point statement. Selling into a retail store means taking that other door, or a wholesale food licence.

No training is recorded as universally required. No training requirement appears in the Act or in any guidance. The absence follows from the blanket exemption, but the health department never states it in terms.

No inspection is what the record says about inspections. Confirm what that means for your product and your local authority, because the two can differ.

Kitchen rules people miss

None of these fit on a label, which is exactly why they get skipped. Read them before the first batch, not after.

• Products are prepared in a private home kitchen. No food preparation is allowed outside it, so bringing ingredients and assembling at a market needs a retail food licence or a temporary permit.
• Montana sets no home kitchen hygiene rules at all: no pets rule, no separate equipment, no water test, no separate storage. The Act forbids an agency from imposing any.
• Selling away from home must be tied to a traditional community social event. You may not set up a stand or a vehicle at the roadside.
• A small dairy tests milk or cream every six months for standard plate count, coliform count and somatic cell count, tests every lactating animal for brucellosis once a year, and keeps two years of records.
• No health claims anywhere: not on labels, not in advertisements, not on social media, not out loud.

What changed, and when

A dated change means an older checklist can be confidently wrong. Read the instrument itself at the official source before you trust anything written before these dates.

• 2021-04-30: Created the Local Food Choice Act, effective on passage and approval: no licensure, permitting, certification, packaging, labelling, testing, sampling or inspection may be required of a homemade food producer selling to an informed end consumer.
• 2023-10-01: Clarified the exemptions, revised farmers market requirements, clarified county commission regulation of markets and the definitions, and restricted the rulemaking authority of the health department and local boards of health. This is the amendment that wrote the no-label carve-out into the farmers market statute.
• 2025-05-01: Added aquaculture products to the raw-and-unprocessed carve-out, so farmed fish may now be sold into or used in a retail food establishment alongside raw fruit and vegetables.

Start this weekend

In this order, so the label is the last thing you check and not the first thing you guess.

• Ask your market what it requires before you book a stall. Private markets can demand a permit the state cannot.
• Check which Montana regime any guidance refers to. The registered Cottage Food programme still exists separately.
• Do all preparation at home. Assembling at the market needs a retail food licence or temporary permit.
• Keep meat out, including in small quantities, and keep alcohol out, rum-filled candy included.
• Remember temperature-controlled food is allowed here, which most neighbouring states do not permit.