Arkansas Food Freedom Act: Disclosures, Buyers, and Liability

The Arkansas Food Freedom Act (Act 1040 of 2021) lets you make and sell homemade food and drink products directly to consumers without a state license, health department permit, commercial kitchen, or inspection. There is no annual sales cap. In exchange, you have to stick to shelf-stable foods, hand your buyer five specific pieces of information at every sale, and accept that the state’s exemption does not extend to civil liability if something goes wrong.¹

What You Can and Cannot Sell

The Act only covers non-TCS foods, meaning products that do not require time or temperature control to stay safe.² The product must be processed at your private residence, which can include a farm or ranch where you live.

Products that typically qualify:

Breads, cookies, muffins, cakes, and brownies without custard or cream fillings
Jams, jellies, and preserves
Fudge, hard candy, caramels, and peanut brittle
Jerky made from fruits or vegetables, dried herbs, and spice blends
Pickles, salsas, and relishes with a pH of 4.6 or below
Honey and roasted coffee

Products you cannot sell under the Act, and which require a health department permit:

Meat and poultry, raw or cooked
Seafood
Wild game
Dairy products
Any other TCS food that needs refrigeration to prevent foodborne illness

The Arkansas Department of Health specifically includes dairy and wild game alongside meat, poultry, and seafood as foods of animal origin that fall outside the Act.³

The Five Required Disclosures

The Act exempts you from standard commercial labeling but replaces those rules with its own. Every sale must give the consumer:

The date the product was manufactured, produced, or processed
The name, address, and telephone number of the producer
The common or usual name of the food
The ingredients, listed in descending order of predominance by weight
This statement, word for word: “This product was produced in a private residence that is exempt from state licensing and inspection. This product may contain allergens.”

That last item is what turns your buyer into an “informed end consumer” under the statute, and its exact wording matters.³ Paraphrasing or skipping it can pull the sale outside the Act’s protections.

Pickled and Acidified Foods Have Extra Rules

Pickled cucumbers and other acidified vegetables sit at the edge of what counts as non-TCS, and the Act treats them differently. You can sell them only if the finished product has an equilibrium pH of 4.6 or below.²

To satisfy that threshold, your recipe must come from a source approved by the Arkansas Department of Health, or it must have been tested by an appropriately certified laboratory that confirms the pH. If neither applies, you have to test every batch yourself with a calibrated pH meter. Each batch also needs a unique batch number, and you must keep records showing the batch number, the recipe, the recipe source or lab results, and the date the batch was prepared.

This is the one category with a real recordkeeping requirement. Every other qualifying product carries none.

Who Your Buyer Has to Be

The Act does not just require a buyer. It requires an “informed end consumer,” a defined term with three parts. The buyer must be the final purchaser (they cannot resell), and before the sale they must be told that the product is not regulated, inspected, or certified by the state and was not made in a licensed or inspected facility.² The mandatory statement in disclosure five is how you meet that requirement in practice.

How You Can Structure Sales and Delivery

Every sale must be direct between the seller and the informed end consumer, but the seller does not have to be you. The Act permits sales through an agent (an employee, friend, or family member acting on your behalf) or through a third-party vendor such as a retail shop or grocery store.¹ A local store can stock and sell your jam without you being present, as long as the disclosures travel with the product.

Orders can come in person, by phone, or online.³ Delivery can be handled by you, your agent, a third-party vendor, or a third-party carrier such as a mail or parcel service. The delivery point can be a farm, farmers’ market, the buyer’s home or office, or anywhere else you and the buyer agree on.²

Selling Across State Lines

Sales must take place within Arkansas, or if you sell to another state, you must comply with all applicable federal laws.¹ The Arkansas Department of Health recommends contacting the FDA and the destination state’s public health authority before any out-of-state sale.³ Other states have their own cottage food or food freedom laws with different restrictions, and Arkansas’s Act does not override them.

Local Governments Cannot Add Their Own Rules

The Act preempts counties, municipalities, and other local governments from prohibiting or regulating the production and sale of homemade food or drink products covered by the statute.⁴ If a city or county tries to require a local permit, impose additional inspections, or ban home food sales outright, the state law overrides it.

Taxes Still Apply

Effective January 1, 2026, Arkansas exempts sales of food and food ingredients from the state-level sales and use tax under the Grocery Tax Relief Act. Local sales taxes still apply. The exemption does not cover “prepared food,” and the statutory definition of prepared food is narrower than the term sounds. Whether your baked goods, jams, or other items fall inside the grocery exemption or count as prepared food is worth checking with the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration, and registering for a sales tax permit is the safest approach if local taxes apply.

Federal income tax is separate from any of this. Income from selling homemade food has to be reported to the IRS whether the state inspects you or not. If the IRS treats your operation as a business rather than a hobby, you can deduct expenses like ingredients, packaging, and equipment; if it treats the activity as a hobby, you report the income but cannot use losses against other earnings.⁵ If you plan to hire employees or form an LLC, you will also need an Employer Identification Number.⁶

The Exemption Does Not Cover Liability

The Act shields you from state licensing and inspection. It does not shield you from lawsuits. If a customer gets sick or has an allergic reaction to something you made, they can sue you for damages, and the Act’s exemptions are not a defense.

By default you are a sole proprietor, which means there is no legal separation between your personal assets and your food business. A judgment against the business is a judgment against you. Forming an LLC puts a barrier between the two, at the cost of additional paperwork and fees. Standard homeowner’s or renter’s insurance typically excludes home-based food businesses, so producers who want coverage generally need product liability insurance written for food producers. Farmers’ markets and retail stores that carry your product may require proof of that insurance before letting you sell through them.

Listing ingredients in descending order, as disclosure four requires, is your practical allergen defense. A customer with a severe allergy who reacts to something not on your ingredient list has a stronger case against you than one who was warned. The mandatory “may contain allergens” statement is a floor, not a ceiling.

1
Justia. Arkansas Code 20-57-504 – Food Freedom
2
FindLaw. Arkansas Code Title 20 – 20-57-503 Definitions
3
Arkansas Department of Health. Arkansas Homemade Food Production Guidelines
4
Justia. Arkansas Code 20-57-507 – Applicability – Preemption
5
Internal Revenue Service. Know the Difference Between a Hobby and a Business
6
Internal Revenue Service. Get an Employer Identification Number