Colorado Has the Tamale Act. Does Vermont Need the Whole Enchilada?
Vermont updated its cottage food law last year. It legalized the jam. Colorado wants to legalize the tamale.
ANALYSIS
If you caught two words on the radio recently and couldn’t shake them, you weren’t alone. The Tamale Act — Colorado’s proposed expansion of home kitchen food sales — has a name sticky enough to follow you from the car to the notepad. What it’s exposing about Vermont’s own cottage food law is worth the detour.
Colorado is in the middle of a loud, bipartisan debate about whether a home cook should be able to sell a tamale, a refrigerated burrito, or a prepared meat dish without a commercial kitchen license. Vermont had a quieter version of that debate last year. Vermont blinked first — and stopped short.
Here’s what that means for anyone in this state who has ever thought about turning a kitchen skill into income.
The Bill With the Sticky Name
The food freedom movement has been gaining ground in statehouses across the country for several years. Its argument is straightforward: if a home cook makes food safe enough to feed their family, the government should not require a commercial license to sell it to a neighbor.
Colorado’s version just got a name that stuck. House Bill 26-1033 — the Tamale Act — would allow home cooks to sell refrigerated and cooked foods, including meat-based dishes, without a commercial kitchen license. Tamales, burritos, potato salad, kimchi, sausage, casseroles — all currently off-limits under Colorado law — would be permitted under the proposal. Sellers would be required to complete a food safety course and register with the state, with the existing $10,000 annual sales cap removed under the proposal. Local health agencies could inspect and levy fines on complaint.
The bill’s sponsors — Republican Rep. Ryan Gonzalez of Greeley and Democratic Majority Leader Monica Duran — named it after the women in Gonzalez’s neighborhood who have sold tamales informally for years. “We know this is happening already,” Gonzalez said. “This bill aims to legalize what we see in the streets.”
The bill has bipartisan support and Governor Jared Polis’s public backing. About a dozen other states are considering some form of food freedom legislation this year, according to forager.com, a cottage food industry tracker.
What Vermont Did — And What It Didn’t
Vermont moved in the same direction last year, but stopped well short of where Colorado is headed.
Before 2025, Vermont had one of the most restrictive cottage food laws in the country. A 2022 ranking by the Institute of Justice — a nonprofit that grades all 50 states on homemade food programs — gave Vermont a D+ for Home Bakeries and a C for Home Processors. That ranking was part of what drove Act 42’s passage.
The legislature addressed part of that criticism. Act 42, passed unanimously and taking effect July 1, 2025, raised the annual sales threshold for license-exempt cottage food production from $10,000 to $30,000. Home bakers, previously capped at $6,500 per year, were brought under the same umbrella. Producers below the ceiling must complete a free online food safety training and register annually — but no inspection, no license fee.
What can they sell? Jams, granola, candy, popcorn, pickles, fermented foods, baked goods. Shelf-stable products — foods that do not require refrigeration or temperature control for safety.
What can’t they sell? Vermont law explicitly excludes non-shelf-stable foods. Quiche is named in statute as an example of what’s prohibited. By extension: prepared meals, refrigerated sauces, meat-based dishes, potato salad. Anything that needs to stay cold.
That’s the wall. Colorado is trying to knock it down. Vermont hasn’t touched it.
The Underground Economy Nobody Talks About
Informal food sales happen in Vermont the same way they happen in Colorado. A tented table in a hardware store parking lot. A neighborhood kimchi maker who built a real company later. A local legend’s barbecued chicken sold at a charity event. Home cooks have always sold prepared food through community networks, farmers markets, and word of mouth — person to person, based on trust and reputation. When Gonzalez said Colorado was legalizing “what we see in the streets,” he was describing an economic reality that predates the legislation. Vermont’s version of that reality is quieter — but anyone who lives here has seen it.
The 30% Problem
Vermont has a stated policy goal of satisfying 30% of its food needs within the state by 2030. The cottage food law is one of the few levers that can move that number from the ground up, without capital investment or state subsidy.
Rural Vermont, the farmer advocacy organization that lobbied for Act 42, called the new law a step toward that goal — but noted that home food producers had been “limited in their business growth by outdated income thresholds.” The threshold was updated. The product category wall was not.
Colorado State University economist Dawn Thilmany, who has studied the cottage food industry nationally, found that for some subset of home-based food businesses, legalization produces real employers. “They do grow and become economically viable businesses,” she said — while noting that home kitchen physical constraints eventually push growth-minded producers toward commercial facilities anyway. Colorado’s sponsor made that dynamic explicit. “We want to get these people into food trucks, into restaurants,” Gonzalez said. “This is a stepping stone.”
The Counterargument Is Legitimate
Public health officials in Colorado aren’t pretending the risks are zero. Using CDC data, nonpartisan legislative analysts estimated the Tamale Act would result in two additional foodborne illness outbreaks per year statewide. Boulder County’s consumer protection coordinator was direct: “It will make people sick.”
The deeper concern is capacity. Colorado’s public health departments are underfunded and understaffed. Responding to a foodborne illness outbreak requires epidemiologists, food safety investigators, state lab resources, and water quality teams — and the Tamale Act provides no additional funding to cover that load.
Vermont’s Department of Health raised similar arguments during Act 42 negotiations, noting that licensing fees help offset the cost of regulatory services across the food manufacturing sector. The department ultimately called the $30,000 threshold “striking the balance between supporting cottage food producers and protecting public health.”
Vermont’s balance point still excludes the foods at the center of the national debate.
The Question Vermont Hasn’t Asked Yet
Act 42 was a real reform. The 2022 Institute of Justice ranking that put Vermont near the bottom of national cottage food laws was part of what forced the conversation. But the Institute of Justice framework grades states on more than income thresholds — it also evaluates what foods can be sold, where, and whether the law treats home producers as entrepreneurs or liabilities.
On the central question Colorado is now debating in public — whether a home cook should be able to sell a tamale, a prepared burrito, a refrigerated salad — Vermont’s answer is still no.
That’s a policy choice, not an oversight. But it’s worth asking whether Vermont’s farm-to-table identity, its 30% food resiliency goal, and its genuine affection for small-scale entrepreneurship are fully aligned with a law that still requires state licensing and inspection to sell a chicken pot pie from your home kitchen.
Colorado’s debate is loud, bipartisan, and national news. Vermont’s version of that conversation hasn’t started yet.
Vermont’s cottage food law (Act 42) took effect July 1, 2025. Colorado’s Tamale Act (HB26-1033) had passed its first House committee and was pending in the House Appropriations Committee as of publication. Vermont home producers can find current requirements at healthvermont.gov.