The purpose of this Food Safety Assessment Tool is to help home kitchen producers implement well-established commercial food safety principles in their home setting.

Many states have adopted laws that allow people to make food in a home kitchen and sell these products directly to consumers. These laws often allow producers to make and sell food without undergoing any inspection, licensing, or permitting that’s required of other food establishments, with the goal of minimizing burdens on producers. While regulations can be burdensome, they also help to protect both the producers and consumers from selling or eating an unsafe food product. In the absence of these regulations, a producer can be left exposed to increased legal liability. It is therefore important that the home producer is aware of and practice food safety standards to minimize the food safety risk to customers and liability risk to their business.

This Food Safety Assessment Tool has adapted industry food safety standards for the home kitchen producer, including food safety prerequisite programs, Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), and Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP). We combine these tools along with the latest research-based food safety recommendations to build this tool with checklist sections covering:

• Sanitary Facilities,
• Suppliers and Ingredients,
• Personnel Hygiene,
• Avoiding Bacterial Growth,
• Avoiding Cross-Contamination, and
• Documentation.

We hope this tool will help make your home kitchen production safer and more successful.

This document was created by AERO, in partnership with Montana State University Extension, with funding from Western Extension Risk Management Education. The material is based upon work supported by USDA/NIFA under Award Number 2021- 70027-34713.