Column: Hawaii farmers and home cooks deserve a chance to grow

Customers love my homemade jams and enjoy the “talk story” that comes with it when they visit my table at farmers markets and other Big Island events.

Neighbors like connecting and catching up. And they like buying locally sourced and produced food from people in the community. Marketgoers feel good when I point to my product labels and tell them where each ingredient came from.

I grow some of the tropical fruit myself at Pukana La Farms, my two-acre property in Waiohinu, about 70 miles southwest of Hilo. As much as possible, I gather the rest — guavas, papayas, mangoes, lychees and lilikoi — from local partners, contributing to a circular economy that starts in Hawaii and stays here. Sometimes I use harder-to-find ingredients like soursop and lipote, a flavor that mixes blueberry and jaboticaba. The results are delicious.

More importantly, the results are safe. I have completed food handler’s training, The Hawaii Master Food Preserves course, and submitted my products for laboratory testing. I take safety seriously, and customers trust me.

Now I wish I could get public health officials on board.

All 50 states and Washington, D.C., allow “cottage food,” which refers to homemade food prepared for sale. But Hawaii imposes tight restrictions. Small-business owners can sell baked goods and products like jam. But we cannot sell canned goods like sauces and condiments that have a safe pH and that have been lab tested. We cannot sell wholesale, accept online orders or deliver by mail, which means I cannot send my food to other Hawaiian islands or the mainland.

Homemade pickled food, canned food or anything that requires refrigeration is also prohibited, unless we navigate the red tape to get special state permission, and prepare these products in a commercial kitchen. For me this would mean turning out the lights in my own kitchen and paying by the hour for access to an inconveniently located facility with limited hours of operation.

Working at night or during unscheduled times would not be possible. And I would have to pay $25 to $50 per hour, which would drive up my overhead and price many customers out of the market.

Some precautions make sense. The state Department of Health has a role to play. But cottage food producers have proved they can operate safely. The Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that defends cottage food producers nationwide, recently collected data from states that allow the sale of homemade perishable foods like pizzas, puddings and tamales in addition to shelf-stable foods.

The result? Health officials report zero confirmed cases of food-borne illness from cottage food in these seven states, which include California, Iowa, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming. Conditions might be different in Hawaii, but cottage food producers like me have earned a chance to branch out.

State lawmakers tried to help during the 2022 and 2023 legislative sessions with Senate Bill 756 and House Bill 520. I gave public testimony to support these bills, which would have relaxed cottage food restrictions and delivered immediate benefits.

My business is small. I am a one-person operation. But I want to expand my product line with sauces, relishes and pickled foods prepared at home. This is where I am comfortable.

Over time, I developed a passion for the culinary arts. Taking tropical fruit from Hawaii and turning it into original creations — like my spicy mango jam — is fulfilling. I do not need big factories, warehouses and global supply chains like many grocery store brands. I would be happy if state regulators just let me maximize my potential at home.

The ability to grow my enterprise could even allow me to hire an employee. In other words, job creation could be on the menu. State lawmakers can do their part by picking up the cottage food reforms, which failed in 2023, and pushing them through during the next legislative session.

The benefits would be sweet, like homemade jam.

Rourk Reagan operates Pukana La Farms in Waiohinu, Hawaii.