The short version: No, you cannot sell beef jerky made at home, because federal meat inspection law covers beef and cottage food laws do not reach it. The four legal paths are a USDA-inspected co-packer, your own USDA-inspected plant, a state-inspected plant in one of 30 states, or a licensed retail store working under the federal retail exemption. Custom-exempt meat is stamped "not for sale" and can never be sold. The retail exemption has a 2026 cap of $109,600 in yearly sales to restaurants, hotels and similar buyers, and at least 75 percent of the store's meat sales have to go to household customers.
Checked on the Federal Register, the text of 9 CFR 303.1 and the USDA's state inspection list, September 18, 2026: the dollar limit applies from May 28, 2026, and the 30-state list was last updated December 17, 2025. Rules and contacts change, so verify your state's current rules with your state department of agriculture before you spend money.
You can't legally sell beef jerky made in your home kitchen anywhere in the United States. Beef falls under a federal meat inspection law, and no state cottage food law or food freedom law gets around it. You can still sell jerky, though. Small vendors do it every weekend at farmers markets, and they use one of four paths that the law actually allows. This guide is written for part-time vendors, not meat plants.
This guide covers the rule itself, the four legal paths, the 2026 dollar limits, which of the 30 inspection states you might be in, and the steps to a first legal sale.
No, beef jerky made in a home kitchen cannot be sold legally in any of the 50 states, even at a farmers market and even with a cottage food permit. The reason is federal, not state. Beef comes from cattle, and meat from cattle, sheep, pigs and goats falls under the Federal Meat Inspection Act. That law requires meat sold to the public to be prepared under inspection or under a narrow exemption, and a home kitchen qualifies for neither.
The federal part is what most guides blur. They say "most states don't allow jerky," which makes it sound like a state-by-state coin flip. It isn't. The states agree because they have to.
What this means for you in plain terms:
If you have already read our guide on how to sell beef jerky from home, which covers equipment, packaging and where jerky sells, this page is its companion. It answers the harder question: which door you are allowed to walk through.
Cottage food laws only cover foods that stay safe without refrigeration and that the state itself has the power to regulate. Jerky fails the second test. A state can decide that cookies or jam made at home are fine to sell, because those foods are regulated by state food law. Meat from cattle is regulated by federal law first.
Food safety is the other reason. The USDA says a pound of raw meat dries down to about 4 ounces of jerky, and the drying step is where the danger lives. According to the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, pathogens like Salmonella and E. coli O157:H7 can survive the 130 to 140 degree heat of a home dehydrator, and they get more heat resistant as the meat dries. That is why the USDA's own recipe heats beef to 160°F before drying.
Our list of what foods you can sell under cottage food laws puts jerky, sausages and smoked meats in the "not allowed" column for this reason. Here is what cottage food laws typically do cover instead:
Notice that dried fruit is on that list. Dried meat is not. The drying method is similar, but the legal category is completely different.
Congress set the rule in the meat inspection law, and the details sit in the federal exemptions rule, 9 CFR 303.1. That rule lists the only situations where meat can be prepared without an inspector on site. Of the exemptions in the rule, three matter to a small jerky vendor:
Everything else needs inspection, either by the USDA or by one of the 30 state programs that the USDA has approved as "at least equal to" federal inspection.
Custom-exempt meat is not a selling path. The federal rule says custom-prepared product can be handled at a retail store "but not for sale," and it is stamped that way. If someone tells you to have a local processor make your jerky under a custom exemption and then sell it, that advice is wrong. We read that rule on September 18, 2026.
Beef jerky can be sold legally through four paths, and one common path looks legal but isn't. The right one for you depends on where you want to sell, how much you want to make, and whether your state runs its own inspection program.
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| Path | Where the jerky is made | Who approves it | Where you can sell | Main limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| USDA-inspected co-packer | A federally inspected plant, using your recipe | USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service | Any state, stores, online, wholesale | Minimum batch sizes and per-pound fees set by the plant |
| Your own USDA-inspected plant | Your own facility with a federal grant of inspection | USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service | Any state, stores, online, wholesale | A written food safety plan, an inspector's schedule, and a real build-out |
| State-inspected plant | A plant under your state's meat inspection program | Your state department of agriculture (30 states) | Only inside that state | Cannot cross state lines, even by mail, unless the plant has joined the federal-state interstate shipping program (CIS) |
| Retail exemption | A licensed retail store or restaurant kitchen, using inspected beef | Your state or county retail food regulator | Consumers only, mostly households | 75 percent household rule and the $109,600 cap for 2026 |
| Custom exempt (not legal to sell) | A custom processor | Exempt from inspection | Nowhere. Marked not for sale | Owner's household only |
Paths and limits come from 9 CFR 303.1, the Federal Register notice of April 28, 2026, and the USDA's state inspection pages, all read on September 18, 2026. Plant fees and batch sizes vary by plant and are not published in one place.
Most part-time vendors land on the first or fourth row. A co-packer is the fastest way to a product you can sell anywhere. The retail exemption is the path for someone who already runs, or partners with, a licensed food business.
The retail exemption lets a licensed retail store or restaurant make jerky on site and sell it without a federal inspector, as long as it meets six conditions. Under 9 CFR 303.1(d), curing, cooking and smoking meat are listed as "traditional and usual" retail operations, which is why a butcher shop can sell its own jerky.
The conditions, in plain English:
The catch is the word "store." The exemption belongs to a licensed retail food business, not to a person with a dehydrator. You still need whatever retail food license your state or county requires, and the rule is written around sales at that establishment. Ask your regulator before you take retail-exempt jerky to a market booth or ship it.
Plan your beef order by weight, not by bags. At about 4 ounces of jerky per pound of raw beef, a 20-pound order of trimmed inspected beef gives you roughly 5 pounds of finished jerky, or 40 two-ounce bags.
Thirty states run their own meat inspection program, and 20 do not. According to the USDA's list, updated December 17, 2025, 26 states inspect both meat and poultry, and 4 (Arkansas, Georgia, Oregon and South Dakota) inspect meat only. If your state is on that list, you can choose state inspection instead of federal inspection.
How the 50 states handle meat inspection
Source: USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, States With and Without Inspection Programs, last updated December 17, 2025, read September 18, 2026.
The states with their own programs are:
The 20 states without a state meat program include California, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Washington. In those states, inspected jerky means a USDA plant.
State inspection is often closer to home and easier to reach for a small plant. The trade-off is the border. The USDA says product inspected under a state program "can only be sold within that State."
Food freedom laws do not cover beef jerky. They let you sell a wide range of homemade food directly to customers, but they cannot override the federal meat law. Wyoming's law lets home cooks sell a wide range of food straight to customers, and it still carves meat out in its own text. Our food freedom states list covers the states with these laws. Here is how Wyoming handles meat.
The Wyoming Food Freedom Act (W.S. 11-49-103) bans meat products except small-scale poultry (up to 1,000 birds of your own raising a year), rabbit, some farm-raised fish and animal shares. A separate subsection would let ranchers sell meat from cattle, sheep, pigs or goats they raised themselves, with a written warning, but the statute says it only takes effect once the governor certifies that federal law allows uninspected direct sales. We read the 2025 statute text on September 18, 2026. Ask the Wyoming Department of Agriculture whether that condition has been met before you rely on it.
So even in Wyoming, where home cooks can sell so much else, a home cook who buys beef at the store and turns it into jerky has no legal path through food freedom. Our guide to Wyoming's cottage food law lists what you can sell there instead.
Some food freedom states treat meat from animals the federal law does not cover differently. The federal meat law covers cattle, sheep, pigs and goats, so a state can open a door for other animals. Wyoming is the example above: its statute allows rabbit and some farm-raised fish now, while beef waits on the governor's certification described in the callout. That door is narrow and differs by state. Read the statute, and get the answer in writing from your state agency before you buy a single pound.
The big cottage food states say no to jerky in plain words. Texas is a good example because its law is one of the most generous in the country, and it still draws a hard line at meat.
Texas expanded its cottage food law with Senate Bill 541, raising the yearly sales cap to $150,000 and letting home vendors sell almost any food. The Texas Department of State Health Services lists the exceptions, and the first ones are "meat, meat products, poultry, or poultry products." Local health departments had to follow the new law starting September 1, 2025. We checked the DSHS cottage food page on September 18, 2026.
If a law that open still carves out meat, you can expect every smaller cottage food program to do the same. Our cottage food laws by state guide lists the caps and allowed foods for each state, and the Texas cottage food law guide covers the Texas rules in detail.
Three patterns show up across state programs:
Fruit jerky is the easiest of these to sell, and deer from a hunt is the hardest. The federal custom exemption lets a processor prepare a game animal for the hunter's household, not for sale, and selling wild game is a separate question run by your state wildlife agency. Treat it as a no until that agency says yes in writing.
Here is how the common alternatives compare:
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| Jerky type | Which law covers it | Home kitchen allowed? |
|---|---|---|
| Beef, pork, lamb or goat | Federal Meat Inspection Act | No, in all 50 states |
| Turkey or chicken | Federal Poultry Products Inspection Act | No, outside narrow federal small-farm poultry exemptions, which your state may limit further |
| Farm-raised bison or elk | FDA food rules, with voluntary USDA inspection or state inspection | Ask your state agriculture department |
| Deer from a hunt | State wildlife law | Treat as no until your state says yes |
| Fruit jerky or fruit leather | State cottage food law | Yes, in many states |
If you want to start selling this month, fruit jerky is the realistic home-kitchen product. Our guide on how to sell dehydrated snacks covers drying temperatures and packaging for it.
In a pull of the Homegrown catalog on September 18, 2026, 0 of the 2,485 products listed by 288 vendors were named beef jerky. Two were beef sticks, a $5.00 Original Beef Snack Stick from Circle H Ranch and $1.50 mini beef sticks from Aliken Beach Farm, and one was a $1.50 fruit jerky. Meat on Homegrown mostly comes from farm and ranch vendors, at least 10 of whom list packaged beef or pork like ground beef, steaks and sausage.
A first legal sale takes five steps, plus one habit of keeping records, and the order matters because the first answer changes everything after it. Plan on calls to at least 3 plants, a label review, and a decision about where customers will order, all before anything gets made. Most of the work happens before you spend $1 on beef. Your plant will give you its own timeline for scheduling and label work.
After the five steps, keep every document. The plant's paperwork, your label approval and your invoices for inspected beef are your proof if a market manager or health inspector asks.
Yes, if the jerky came from an inspected plant or a qualifying store kitchen, and if your market and county allow it. Farmers markets usually ask meat vendors for more paperwork than bakers, so expect several documents, like the ones listed below, and possibly more, such as a sampling permit or a sales tax ID. Most managers want to see where the jerky was made, and a letter from your plant is usually the fastest way to show it.
What market managers commonly ask a jerky vendor for:
Shelf-stable jerky in sealed bags is one of the easier meat products to handle at a booth. It doesn't need a cooler, and it is easy to sample if your county allows samples. If you sell under a state inspection program, remember that the market has to be in the same state. A booth at a market across the state line is interstate commerce, even if it is only 20 minutes from home. That same state line decides six other places to sell, and the guide to where to sell beef jerky walks through each one, from gun shows and taprooms to Etsy at $1.59 on a $12 bag.
You can sell and ship jerky anywhere in the country only if it came from a USDA-inspected plant. State-inspected jerky can be sold online, but only to customers inside your state, and it cannot be mailed across state lines. The one exception is a small state plant approved to ship interstate, covered below. The USDA's words are plain: product inspected under a state program "can only be sold within that State."
How that plays out by path:
One exception exists. Under the Cooperative Interstate Shipment (CIS) program, some small state-inspected plants can operate like federal plants and ship across state lines. Only states that signed an agreement take part. As of our September 18, 2026 check, the USDA's page lists 10 of them: Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Vermont and Wisconsin. Under 9 CFR 332.3 the plant also has to average 25 or fewer employees, with never more than 35 on the payroll at one time, and meet the federal rules for sanitation, labels and a written HACCP plan. Ask your state agency whether your plant is enrolled. For most part-time vendors, local pickup is the simplest answer because it keeps every sale inside your state.
Every legal path still requires a proven safe process, and the inspected ones require it in writing. USDA and state-inspected plants run under a written food safety plan called HACCP, short for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points. The USDA publishes a compliance guideline written specifically for jerky made in small and very small plants.
The core safety steps the USDA recommends for jerky:
Retail stores face their own rules. Montana's health department posts a guidance for processing beef jerky in retail operations, written with the FDA, the USDA and state agriculture departments. It explains that drying and curing meat at retail can require a variance and a written HACCP plan in states that adopted those parts of the FDA Food Code. Ask your county whether it requires both before you make jerky in a store kitchen.
Once your jerky comes from an inspected plant, the next problem is turning Saturday market buyers into weekly reorders without living in your text messages. Many jerky buyers stick with one flavor, which makes pre-orders a good fit. Homegrown is $10 per month billed annually, with no percentage fees beyond standard payment processing, and gives you one storefront link where customers pick flavors and bag sizes, pay, and choose a pickup day.
For a jerky vendor, the parts that matter are pre-orders by pickup date, payment collected up front so a co-packer run is paid for before it ships, and a link you can print on your label or booth sign. New vendors get a 7-day trial with no charge until day 8, per the signup page we checked on September 18, 2026.
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| Platform | Monthly plan | Trial | Platform fee | Card processing | Customer pays on a $20 order | Vendor pays on a $20 order | Vendor pays in a month of 50 orders at $20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Homegrown | $10 billed annually ($12.50 monthly) | 7 days, no charge until day 8 | None, 0% commission | 2.9% + $0.30, paid by the vendor | $20.00 | $0.88 plus the plan | $54.00 |
| Square Online, Free plan | $0 | Not needed, the plan is $0 | None | 3.3% + $0.30 online, paid by the vendor | $20.00 | $0.96 | $48.00 |
| Shopify Basic | $29 billed yearly ($39 monthly) | 3 days, then $1 a month for 3 months | None with Shopify Payments | 2.9% + $0.30 online, paid by the vendor | $20.00 | $0.88 plus the plan | $73.00 |
We checked these on Homegrown's signup page, Square's online store plans page and Shopify's pricing page on September 18, 2026. The month of 50 orders adds the annual-billing plan price to 50 card fees. Shipping, taxes and any add-on apps are not included.
Honest comparison: at 50 orders a month, Square's Free plan costs about $6 less than Homegrown, and it is a strong choice if you already use Square at your booth. Shopify is the better fit once you sell USDA-inspected jerky nationwide and ship every order. Homegrown does not handle shipping labels, wholesale accounts or inspection paperwork, and customers create a Homegrown account to place their first order. Your storefront is listed on the Homegrown marketplace, but plan on most orders coming from people you send to your own link.
The most common jerky mistakes come from treating meat like baked goods. Here are the five that cause the most trouble, and each one can cost you a market spot or worse.
The fix for all five is the same first step: get the path in writing from your state agency before your first batch. If you are moving up from a cottage food business, our guide to moving from cottage food to a commercial kitchen covers the costs of that jump. When your inspected jerky is ready and you want regulars to order ahead of your next production run, you can set up your Homegrown storefront and share the link at your booth.
Not if it was made in a home kitchen. Beef jerky sold at a farmers market has to come from a USDA-inspected plant, a state-inspected plant in your state, or a store kitchen that qualifies for the federal retail exemption. Your market will usually ask to see proof, like the establishment number on your label.
Yes. The jerky needs inspection or a retail exemption, and you will usually also need a county or state vendor permit and a compliant label. The exact licenses depend on your state and your path, so call your state department of agriculture first and ask which inspection path applies.
No state cottage food law allows beef jerky, because federal law puts beef under mandatory inspection. Texas, which lets home vendors sell almost any food up to $150,000 a year, still lists meat and meat products as the first exception. Fruit jerky and fruit leather are a different product and are allowed in many states, so check your state's cottage food list first.
Yes, and it is the most common path for small jerky brands. A USDA-inspected co-packer makes your recipe under its own inspection, and the product carries the plant's establishment number. Expect minimum batch sizes and per-pound fees, and compare at least three plants before you sign.
Only if an inspected plant or a qualifying retail store made it. USDA-inspected jerky can ship to all 50 states. Jerky from a state-inspected plant can be sold online only to customers in that same state, unless that plant is approved for interstate shipping under CIS, so local pickup is the safest setup.
There is no cap on sales to household customers. The cap applies to sales to restaurants, hotels and similar buyers, which must stay at or under 25 percent of the store's meat sales and at or under $109,600 for 2026. FSIS adjusts that dollar figure each year based on meat prices.
These 5 guides cover the next questions most jerky vendors ask, from packaging to which foods you can make at home instead:
Beef jerky takes more setup than cookies, but the rules are clear once you know which door you are walking through. Start with one call to your state department of agriculture, pick your path, and when your first inspected batch is ready, start your Homegrown storefront so your regulars can order the flavors they want before the next run.
