Excerpts:
State laws permitting cottage foods are quickly catching up with the demand for looser regulations. Nearly three-dozen states now have cottage food laws in place. And advocates in other states—including Minnesota and Alabama—are pushing to add their states to the growing list.
While cottage food laws benefit home cooks and their customers, another important development at the state level is the ongoing struggle for food freedom for small agricultural producers. Significant recent developments are centered in Virginia—a state boasting both lots of lawyers and lots of farmers.
Perhaps the most noteworthy development in the state is Virginia’s proposed farm freedom law—also known as the Boneta Bill. The bill is named for Virginia farmer Martha Boneta, who was fined last summer for having hosted a birthday party for her friend’s pre-teen daughter on her own farm without first obtaining a permit. (See: Pitchfork Protest: Farmer Fined for Hosting 10 Year Old’s Birthday Party at the Farm)
“Burdensome rules, regulations and inspection requirements—many of which are indecipherable except to lawyers and bureaucrats—now impede the ability of health-conscious individuals and small farmers to raise and produce their own food free of corporate contaminants,” says John W. Whitehead, constitutional attorney and president of the nonprofit Rutherford Institute, which is based in Charlottesville, Virginia, in an email to me this week.
“That growing numbers of home gardeners and small farmers are being prosecuted for such inane ‘crimes’ as keeping chickens or making cheese speaks to a growing problem in America today, namely, the overcriminalization and overregulation of a process that once was at the heart of America’s self-sufficiency—the ability to cultivate one’s own food, locally and sustainably,” says Whitehead.
Read the Full Story here: http://reason.com/archives/2013/02/02/food-freedom-vs-regulatory-busybodies