An upcoming food safety training
course will help explain a new Alabama law that allows anyone to sell
non-hazardous foods directly to consumers.
The new Alabama Cottage Food Law took effect June 1, allowing
homemade food to be legal
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The Alabama Cooperative Extension Service will host a food safety
class in Selma August 12 from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. at Alagasco, located at
Highway 14 west. The class will go over how to safely produce foods in a
home and those who complete it will get a certificate of completion.
“We have about 300,000 food borne illnesses reported every year
through the Center for Disease Control so the purpose of them learning
about it is to see what they can do to prevent that from happening,”
said Janice Hall, a regional extension agent. “We don’t want them to be a
statistic.”
Anyone who makes baked good at home must put a label on their foods
that displays the person or business’ name, the address where it came
from and state the food is not inspected by the Department of Public
Health.
“At home you don’t have the commercial sinks and the sterilizers and
all of that to make sure everything is sterilized,” Dallas County
extension agent Callie Nelson said. “So what this is going to be
training people on is steps they can take to ensure food safety in the
products that they produce.”
Among the foods that can be sold directly to consumers under the new
law are candies, jams and jellies, dried herbs, cakes, cookies,
pastries, doughnuts, danishes, breads and other baked goods. Baked goods
made with an ingredient that requires refrigeration, such as cakes with
a whipped topping, barbeque sauces and soft or hard cheeses, cannot be
sold directly to the consumer.