The California Homemade Food Act (AB 1616) was recently introduced in the CA state assembly!

The rules from the bill are at the link below (these rules may change as the legislative process continues). Registration with the local health dept would be required, probably including a fee, but no routine inspections are required (unless there is a complaint) and there is no limit on sales. Wholesale, mail order, and internet sales are OK. Section 113406 of the bill also restricts the ability of municipalities to disallow legal homemade food operations for zoning reasons, which is great for home bakers but this provision may not survive. From what I can tell it looks like compliance with the trans fat ban is handled on the honor system, but that may change. I would also be surprised if a gross sales limit was not added to the bill.
http://www.theselc.org/cottagefood/cottage-food-lawscottage-food-law-bill-language/

You can support the bill by contacting your state representatives:
http://www.theselc.org/cottagefood/takeaction/

Thanks for the heads-up. Good luck to you all.

I just told the girl from the telemerketer who called me from California about this. She was very surprised that you can't work from home in California since she's in pastry school and was obviously planning to do that.

You can also track the bill here.

AB 1616 was referred to the Assembly's health committee on 2/23. Contact information for the committee can be found at the link below:
http://ahea.assembly.ca.gov/

And a list of members in the committee:
http://ahea.assembly.ca.gov/membersstaff

If you live in California and your rep is on the committee this is a great opportunity to voice your opinion.

This bill (among others) will be discussed at a health committee assembly hearing on Tuesday, March 27th, at 1:30 p.m. in the State Capitol building, Room 4202 in Sacramento.

If you live in the area and would like to testify for the bill (you'll have 3 minutes max), contact the committee at 916.319.2097.

http://ahea.assembly.ca.gov/hearings

I currently live in NY but will be moving to CA in a few months. I read over the outline of the bill and it states that you can only sell "non-potentially hazardous foods". That same line is in the NY supposed "cottage food law" and from what I understand, here in NY that means you can't make cakes (too high in moisture) or buttercream (uncooked butter) in your home kitchen to sell (although you can build a separate commercial kitchen on your property). Basically all you can do is sell cookies at the farmer's market. Yeah, not so helpful for a cake decorator. Anyway, do you know what it means in California? Dare I hope it could include cakes? Anyone know?

A quick search pulled up this site about the Cottage Food law in Texas. Sounds similar to the proposed components of the California law.

http://www.texascottagefoodlaw.com/FAQ.aspx

Cakes, cookies, and even Earlene's Cream Cheese Icing are ok.
http://www.texascottagefoodlaw.com/Resources/Recipes/CreamCheeseButtercreamEarlene.aspx
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Thanks for posting, Jason!

Thanks! That gives me hope then. I had noticed that other states seemed to treat it differently (why is NY so weird?). Now if only this bill will pass! I'll see if there's anything I can do to help it along. But I probably need a resident address first.

Thank you jason_kraft. I have created a thread on Wilton.com as well. Please send this information to all the cake forums you can think of so the maximum # of people can start writing!

Here's the link to the Wilton.com thread:
http://www.wilton.com/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=8&threadid=160834&STARTPAGE=1&CFID=49973427&CFTOKEN=28298455

Thank you jason_kraft! I'm glad to know that is California's stance. I'm really rooting for this to pass!

I just signed it today, if you live in California please sign this even if you are not interested in starting a business now you never know if your interest will change in a few years.

I've already signed if you live in CA please sign and then come back to this thread and sign your user name or put a smiley face or something so that this thread will keep going back to the cc home page and make more people aware of this. Once you reply to the the thread it will show up under the forum tab as one of your watched topics.

Bump

Signed

It was to be looked at on 3/27/12 put moved to 4/10/12

On April 10 the committee will be looking at the bill, new amendments needed to be added and some other stuff needed to be worked out as requested by the legislative staff in Sacramento.

Oh my...this is pretty amazing! We find out wether its good April 10th?

Only the health committee will be looking at the bill on April 10th...so it will either be approved by the committee (meaning it can be put to a vote by the full assembly, which may or may not happen this year), amended (meaning further debates before a floor vote is possible), or shelved.

This would be so great. I am not sure if I want to go inot business, but atleast I would have the option. I like baking when I want for friends and family....the thought of doing it all day everyday makes me a little ill. But YAY!!!

Update:

The hearing date for the bill going before the Health Committee has been pushed back to April 17. There's an amendment process going on to clarify some of the language which is taking longer than expected. Hang in there! We'll make it to committee soon. We'll provide an update once the amendments are hashed out. The team is fighting for amendments that keep the red tape and costs to a minimum for cottage food producers. Information posted by Christina Oatfield from Sustainable Economies Law Center

Just wondering, I've mentioned this to a few people and they laugh saying this will never in a million years happen - the CA hospitality industry is planning to nuke it before it ever gets to the Assembly. Has anyone else heard this?

I don't mean to be pessimistic, I was just wondering if anyone has heard anything about the opposition.

Have not heard that. Christine did post that Whole foods in CA is supporting the bill.

If we spread the word enough to show that we really want this to happen then we can beat them. Besides it really doesn't affect them much.

The Hospitality Industry?? You don't need them to nuke the bill, the State Legislature does a fine job all by their lonesome of being anti-business.