Is there any rhyme or reason to the way that states differ in their provisions?
For example, I could see it being more difficult to preserve pickles in Florida's warmer weather, but I don't see it being easier to preserve baked goods.
Or are Floridians just culturally more comfortable with baked goods, and less fond of pickles, than their counterparts in Wisconsin?
Does your book include useful exemptions?
I've heard that 'sun-dried' whole fruits can be sold without a processor's license, where cooked foods like jams or jellies are considered a processed food, for example.
As for differences from cooking for the family: Your family might have a thriving gut biome that can handle the rankest stuff, but you don't want your first public
marketing to be marred by someone getting an upset stomach or illness.
The first thing I'd do is study up for the food handler card/certificate. We all did this for a summer camp I worked for, since we were making wild-foraged teas and berry jam and cheese with the kids.
I found a selection of free
online course links from my county's website, you only pay after you pass the course if you want the printable card, which cost about $10 as I recall. You could easily study up even if you don't want or need the card.
Food handler training covers high-risk foods and handling methods, hand-washing and preventing the spread of illness (including watch-out symptoms that indicate you should not handle other people's food today).
Some things I remember are how long food can sit out in "the danger zone" temperatures, proper cooking temperatures for animal products, tips for heating and cooling big batches of food quickly and safely, proper dish-washing and trash-handling hygeine, and so on. Even if you won't be selling the 'dangerous' products like meat and shellfish, you might want to reserve the top shelf of your fridge or pantry for your market goodies, or keep them in a bin with a good lid, so they can't get dripped on by unseemly stuff that was intended for the family.
If you have been getting rave reviews at potlucks for years, you probably won't have to adjust your methods much. But you might find a couple of tips that greatly reduce the risk as you scale up your operations.
-Erica
1
it's the one thing that puts me off doing stuff like this - the endless regulations that make this sort of thing financially unviable in the UK.
