Health Department proposes pH and recipe checks to let some home-canned products remain exempt under H.401

The Vermont Department of Health told the Senate Health & Welfare Committee on Monday that the draft of bill H.401 can be amended to allow some home-canned pickles, vegetables and fruits under a proposed $30,000 cottage-food exemption so long as producers use validated recipes or obtain a process-authority review.

The change would add “home canned pickles, vegetables, or fruits that have a pH value of 4.6 or lower or a water activity value of 0.85 or less” to the bill’s definition of cottage food, the department said. The department recommended operators use validated recipes available for free from the National Center for Home Food Preservation or have recipes reviewed by a process authority to confirm safety.

That recommendation matters because the committee is weighing two aims that sometimes pull in different directions: protecting public health and supporting small, often rural, food businesses. Committee members and Rural Vermont representatives told the panel they want to expand the exemption to help small producers while avoiding new public-health risks.

Elizabeth Worsheimer, Senior Environmental Health Program Manager at the Vermont Department of Health, said the department had kept the existing $10,000 exemption in prior language and was offering additional wording to allow certain canned products under a larger $30,000 threshold. “Those products would still be allowed under that the $10,000 exemption that is still, kept in the language of the bill that recognizes the landscape that has been present in Vermont,” she said. Worsheimer later summarized the department’s recommended change: “the language would be to add home canned pickles, vegetables, or fruits that have a pH value of 4.6 or lower or a water activity value of 0.85 or less to the definition of cottage food.”

The department said the stricter definitions respond to food-science and federal requirements that govern acidified and low-acid canned foods. Worsheimer told senators other states that allow pickles or fermented products in cottage-food exemptions commonly require either validated recipes or a review by a process authority; those reviews examine ingredients and processing steps and are performed by experts in acidification and thermal processing. The department said local process-authority reviews currently run about $150–$190.

Worsheimer described Vermont’s reportable disease surveillance for foodborne illness and said the system likely captures only a portion of actual cases. She reported 2024 preliminary reportable disease totals of 474 cases statewide, citing the department’s counts for common foodborne pathogens: more than 200 campylobacter cases, about 110 salmonellosis cases, roughly 65 shiga-toxin producing E. coli (STEC) cases and five listeria cases. She also recounted recent outbreak investigations the department has conducted that involved unlicensed or unregulated operators, including a 16-case salmonella outbreak linked to a community event and smaller clusters tied to homemade meals and agritourism events.

Representatives of Rural Vermont welcomed the additional language as a compromise. Caroline Sherman Gordon, legislative director of Rural Vermont, said the wording “would be a step in the right direction” and called for clarifying whether the cottage-food definition would in effect require production in a domestic home kitchen or allow use of separate commercial or community kitchens. Rural Vermont and some senators raised concerns that producers without safe home facilities could be excluded if the definition requires domestic-home production; the department and committee members pointed to existing food hubs and community commercial kitchens as options and said licensure in those facilities is straightforward.

Senators asked for technical clarifications and supporting data. Senator Eulich asked whether pH or water-activity limits are easily measurable by small producers; Worsheimer replied that validated recipes remove the need for individual measurements and that many operators can verify pH with a home pH meter if desired. Senators also asked the department to provide additional epidemiologic detail on how illness cases and outbreaks are detected and investigated.

Committee leadership said staff will ask legal counsel to integrate the department’s proposed language for markup, and the committee will reconvene to review the revised draft. The department offered to return with the requested data and to work with counsel to refine statutory text.

No formal vote occurred during the discussion.