Taste of home: lawmakers are balancing strict food safety laws with policies to encourage small food entrepreneurs.

• Author: Farquhar, Doug
• Position: FOOD SAFETY

Food safety is something most Americans take for granted.

But that confidence is shaken when there's an outbreak of a food-borne illness, like the Listeria infection in Colorado cantaloupes last year that left 32 people dead.

There's plenty of reason to be concerned. One of every six people becomes ill each year from eating contaminated foods, according to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An estimated 48 million Americans become sick from food-borne illness, 128,000 end up in hospitals and 3,000 die.

While state lawmakers are well aware of the dangers, they increasingly are interested in introducing more flexible rules to allow for the growth of local food producers. New laws to encourage the "cottage food" movement offer exemptions for food start-ups from state health and food safety rules until they become established.

From Maryland to California, cottage food laws have struck a chord with lawmakers. Exemptions from food safety laws for church suppers, potlucks, farmers' markets or foods sold directly to consumers are a way to encourage entrepreneurs and promote economic development. Arkansas, Arizona, Indiana, Maryland, Missouri, Minnesota, Montana, Texas, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming have adopted cottage food laws.

"Food safety rules and fees were preventing businesses from starting up," says Michigan Senator John Proos (R), sponsor of his state's Cottage Foods Act. "By providing this exemption, we have seen an explosion of small producers selling at farmers' markets across Michigan."

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Collaborative Process

Former Minnesota Representative Al Juhnke's (D) foremost concern was "first, do no harm" in adopting a cottage foods law in Minnesota.

He worked closely with the state health department to determine the most important food safety concerns and other areas where it made sense to back off. Labeling was important to let consumers know what the product contained and that it was not inspected by the state.

"People have an expectation that their food is safe and inspected. That's

not always the case," says Juhnke, who left the House in 2010 and now is an aide to U.S. Senator Al Franken.

In Michigan, Proos worked with the state agriculture department on the cottage food bill. To deal with labeling and hazardous food concerns, the department identified potentially hazardous foods that require time or temperature control for safety--meats, poultry and shellfish, mushrooms, raw...