Wisconsin Cottage Food Laws: Baked Goods, Canning, and Labeling

Wisconsin cottage food laws run on two separate tracks rather than a single statute. A state law often called the Pickle Bill lets you sell home-canned high-acid foods directly to consumers at farmers’ markets and community events, capped at $5,000 a year. A 2017 court injunction, Kivirist v. DATCP, lets you sell shelf-stable home-baked goods directly to consumers without a license and without a specific dollar cap. Each track has its own list of allowed products, approved venues, and labeling rules, and mixing them up is the easiest way to lose your exemption.

Home-Canned Foods: The Pickle Bill

Wisconsin Statute § 97.29 exempts home-canned fruits and vegetables that are naturally acidic or acidified through pickling or fermenting. The finished product must have an equilibrium pH of 4.6 or lower, the threshold that keeps shelf-stable canned food safe from botulism.¹ Pickles, salsas, chutneys, sauerkraut, kimchi, jams, jellies, applesauce, and canned peaches typically qualify.²

Four conditions have to be true at the same time: you prepare and can the food at home in Wisconsin, you sell directly to the consumer, the sale happens at a community event, social event, or farmers’ market inside the state, and your gross receipts from these sales stay under $5,000 per person per year.¹ Selling from your home, shipping jars by mail, taking online orders, or wholesaling to a store or restaurant all fall outside the exemption.² Hit the $5,000 cap and you have to stop selling for the rest of the year or move up to a commercial food processing license.

Home-Baked Goods: The Kivirist Injunction

In 2017, a Lafayette County Circuit Court ruled in Kivirist v. Wisconsin Department of Agriculture that enforcing commercial licensing against home bakers of shelf-stable, non-hazardous baked goods violated equal protection and due process. The court enjoined DATCP from requiring licenses for those sales, and a later clarification specified that the order covers homemade, shelf-stable foods baked in an oven.³ In practice that means cookies, muffins, breads, and cakes without perishable fillings.

The Kivirist track is more flexible than the Pickle Bill on venue. You can sell direct to consumers anywhere, and DATCP’s current guidance also allows online orders with local delivery.⁴ Wholesaling to another business still requires a license. No dollar cap appears in the court order, though the Wisconsin Legislative Council describes the exemption as applying “at a low volume.”⁵

One caution: Kivirist is a circuit court injunction, not binding appellate law. When another group tried to extend the same reasoning to unbaked shelf-stable items like granola, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals reversed and sided with DATCP, noting that the Kivirist circuit decision is “neither precedent nor authority.”³ The baked-goods exemption continues because DATCP has chosen to follow the injunction, which makes it less durable than the Pickle Bill’s statutory exemption.

What You Cannot Sell

Neither track covers these products, and selling them from your home requires a food processing plant license:

Low-acid canned foods such as canned corn, green beans, or beets, where pH sits above 4.6 and botulism risk is real.
Meat, poultry, and fish products, which fall under separate USDA or state inspection.
Anything that needs refrigeration, including cheesecakes, custard-filled pastries, and cream cheese frostings.
Unbaked shelf-stable foods like granola, trail mix, and candy. The Court of Appeals declined to extend Kivirist to these items.³
Pickled eggs, pesto, lemon curd, and salad dressings. DATCP lists these as requiring a license regardless of pH.²

Labeling and Signage

For home-canned goods, § 97.29 spells out exactly what has to appear on every container:¹

Your full name and physical address.
The date the food was canned.
The statement “This product was made in a private home not subject to state licensing or inspection.”
Ingredients listed in descending order of prominence by weight.
Any allergen from milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, wheat, peanuts, or soybeans identified by common name in the ingredient list.

You also have to display a sign at the sales location reading: “These canned goods are homemade and not subject to state inspection.” The sign wording and the label disclaimer are slightly different, and the statute requires both.¹

Home-baked goods have no statutory labeling requirement because the exemption comes from a court order rather than legislation. Following the same labeling practices used for canned goods is a sensible default: your name and contact information, the product name, a full ingredient list with allergens called out, and the private-home disclaimer.

Records and pH Testing for Canners

DATCP strongly recommends keeping written records for every batch you can for sale: product name, recipe with procedures and ingredients, amount canned and sold, canning date, sale dates and locations, gross receipts, and any pH test results.⁶ Those records help you prove you are under the $5,000 cap and give you a paper trail if a customer reports an illness.

DATCP also recommends testing the first batch of each recipe during the production season using a properly calibrated pH meter, or short-range litmus paper that covers the 4.6 range for products normally below pH 4.0. Standardized recipes from university extension programs or the National Center for Home Food Preservation are the agency’s preferred source.⁷ These are recommendations rather than legal requirements, but a salsa that drifts above pH 4.6 is a real safety problem, and the records are your best defense if something goes wrong.

Taxes, Insurance, and Local Zoning

Being exempt from state food licensing does not make the income tax-free. Cottage food revenue is taxable and must be reported to the IRS. If you are keeping organized books and operating with the intent to make a profit, the IRS treats the activity as a business, which lets you deduct ingredients, packaging, and booth fees against revenue. If the IRS classifies it as a hobby, the income is still taxable but most deductions disappear, and hobby income is reported on Schedule 1, Form 1040.⁸ Wisconsin sales tax may also apply depending on what you sell; check with the Wisconsin Department of Revenue for your specific products.

Standard homeowners insurance policies exclude business activities, so a claim arising from a customer illness will likely be denied. Product liability policies written for cottage food operations typically start around $300 per year and cover illness or injury caused by the food you sell, sometimes with general liability for bodily injury at your sales location.

Before your first sale, contact your city or county zoning office. Municipal rules on home-based businesses vary across Wisconsin, and some require a home occupation permit even when the state food exemption clearly applies. A local ordinance violation can shut you down regardless of state law.

Pending Change: Assembly Bill 748

The 2025–2026 Legislature is considering Assembly Bill 748, which would replace the current two-track system with a single cottage food framework covering any “nonpotentially hazardous food” sold directly to consumers. The bill creates two tiers based on prior-year gross sales:⁹

Small producers under $10,000 would need only a point-of-sale sign stating the food is homemade and not subject to state inspection.
Cottage food producers between $10,000 and $40,000 would need at least one household member to hold a certificate of food protection practices, and the home kitchen would have to pass a DATCP inspection.

The bill caps all home-produced food sales at $40,000 in combined gross annual revenue; above that, a standard commercial license would be required.⁹ As of mid-2025, AB 748 has been introduced but not enacted. Check the Legislature’s website for the current status before building a business plan around its provisions.

1
Wisconsin State Legislature. Wisconsin Statutes 97.29 – Food Processing Plants
2
Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. Home-Canned Foods
3
Wisconsin Court System. Wisconsin Cottage Food Association v. WI Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection
4
Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. Licenses and Homemade Baked Goods
5
Wisconsin State Legislature. Wisconsin Cottage Food Law
6
Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. Selling Home-Canned Foods
7
Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. Selling Home Canned Foods
8
Taxpayer Advocate Service. Hobby vs. Business Income
9
Wisconsin State Legislature. 2025 Assembly Bill 748