By LINDA McGURK
Indiana Correspondent

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — It’s been nearly a year since the Indiana General Assembly enacted HEA 1309 to regulate vendors at farmers’ markets and roadside stands, but with the growing season just around the corner, many producers and market masters are still confused over some provisions of the law.

To help clarify the various interpretations of the new rules, the Indiana Farm Bureau (IFB) teamed up with Purdue University extension and the Indiana Cooperative Development Center to offer a Home Based Vendor (HBV) “Boot Camp” on March 3.
“I think everybody has been getting a lot of questions about the rules and regulations,” said Tiffany Obrecht, IFB policy specialist. “With any new legislation there’s going to be some confusion, and there have been a lot of discrepancies in the way different county health departments interpret the new rules.”

Until HEA 1309 was enacted in May 2009, farmers’ markets in Indiana were legally considered “food establishments,” meaning they had to abide to the same stringent regulations as restaurants and grocery stores. The new legislation was meant to make it easier to sell produce and other home-processed food items at farmers’ markets legally, provided the HBVs follow certain rules in regards to labeling and sanitation.

Some of the confusion has concerned who can be considered an HBV, which products can be prepared in the vendor’s home, versus a commercial kitchen, and where the products can be sold.

Scott Gilliam, director of food protection with the Indiana State Department of Health, said that the law defines a farmers’ market as “a common facility where two or more farmers or growers gather on a regular recurring basis to sell a variety of fruits, vegetables and other farm products directly to consumers.”

A roadside stand is defined as a “place, building or structure along, or near, a road, street, lane, avenue, boulevard or highway where an HBV sells food product(s) to the public.”

However, HBVs cannot sell their products from their home or a regulated food establishment.

An HBV is only allowed to sell food products that are not considered “potentially hazardous.” The products allowed include: baked goods (cakes, fruit pies, cookies, brownies, dry noodles), candy and confections (caramels, chocolates, fudge, hard candy), produce (whole and unprocessed), tree nuts and legumes, honey, molasses, sorghum, maple syrup, jams, jellies and preserves made with high acid fruit.

Natural or synthetic foods that require temperature control because they’re susceptible to rapid growth of infectious and toxic microorganisms are considered potentially hazardous. Gilliam pointed out these products can still be sold at farmers’ markets or roadside stands, but then they will be considered food establishments and will be regulated as such.

These foods include meat (domestic or wild), poultry, aquatic animal products, dairy (including raw milk) and egg products. In addition, seed sprouts and cut melons are considered potentially hazardous and off-limits to HBVs.

“We know that some of these products are sold at farmers’ markets and there are a lot of salmonella and Clostridium botulinum outbreaks related to these,” Gilliam said.

The Food and Drug Administration’s food code, which is a policy rather than law, also categorizes cut tomatoes and cut leafy greens as potentially hazardous. Salads are definitely covered by this definition, but exactly where to draw the line on cut leafy greens is triggering a lot of questions.

“Right now, something more than harvest and light trimming is considered processing, but stay tuned on that one because we don’t have all the answers yet,” Gilliam said. “This has not been adopted in Indiana yet, but we have the full intention to do so.”
Other foods are causing uncertainty as well, and Gilliam clarified that shell eggs cannot be sold by an HBV, though the State Egg Board currently exempts eggs sold directly on the farmer’s property. Low-acid and acidified foods, such as canned green beans, pickled beets and salsa, are also considered potentially hazardous and may not be sold by an HBV.

Many of the 100-plus vendors and market masters in the crowd had questions about specific scenarios on which they had received conflicting advice, depending on which health official with whom they happened to speak.

“There’s some confusion over whether you can prepare some food in a commercial kitchen and some food at home,” said IFB’s Obrecht. “Say, for example, that you make salsa, which is a potentially hazardous food product, in a commercial kitchen, and then bake bread, which is not hazardous, at home. The question is whether you can sell both and still be considered an HBV, and there’s still a lot of confusion in this specific area. Truthfully, I’ve heard it both ways.”

Obrecht said a key point of the legislation is to get some consistency in the way local and county health departments handle HBVs, and to level the playing field across the state.

“Obviously, the goal behind the legislation is to increase the availability of local products at farmers’ markets. We also hope it will increase the number of people who become vendors,” she said.
For more, visit www.ag.purdue.edu/foodsci/Pages/IN-HEA-1309-info.aspx