Tennessee HB 130 Food Freedom Act Expansion: What Changed in 2025

What HB 130 Changed

House Bill 130, signed into law as Public Chapter 431 and effective July 1, 2025, was the biggest expansion of Tennessee's Food Freedom Act since its original passage in 2022. The amendment opened the door to an entire category of products that were previously illegal to produce in a home kitchen: Time/Temperature Control for Safety (TCS) foods.

Before HB 130, the TFFA covered only non-TCS, shelf-stable items — baked goods, jams, dried herbs, candies. If your product needed refrigeration, you needed a commercial kitchen. The 2025 amendment changed that.

What's Now Legal That Wasn't Before

HB 130 added three product categories to the home-kitchen exemption:

Pasteurized dairy products: Butter, yogurt, kefir, and hard cheeses made from commercially pasteurized milk. Raw milk remains completely prohibited — that hasn't changed.

Eggs: Shell eggs from flocks of fewer than 3,000 hens. The eggs must be kept refrigerated at or below 41°F from collection through sale.

Poultry products: Cooked chicken, turkey, and waterfowl products like pot pies, rotisserie chicken, and poultry-based soups. Poultry must be sourced under the federal 1,000-bird exemption (9 CFR § 381.10(c)) or from federally or state-inspected processing. Each transaction is limited to 75 pounds of poultry.

The Sales Channel Restriction

The amendment attached a strict condition to all TCS products: in-person, direct-to-consumer sales only. You can't ship TCS foods, sell them wholesale to stores, or use third-party delivery services. The physical handoff must happen face-to-face between you (or your immediate agent) and the end consumer.

Permitted venues for TCS sales: farmers markets, roadside stands on your property, direct home pickup, and in-person delivery by the producer.

Online and phone orders are allowed — the law permits you to accept orders remotely. But the actual product must be handed off in person. This is the opposite of the non-TCS rules, where you can ship products within Tennessee and wholesale to retail stores.

Temperature Control Requirements

HB 130 formalized temperature management into law for TCS products:

• Cold items: maintain at or below 41°F at all times
• Hot items: maintain at or above 135°F
• The danger zone (41°F to 135°F): any TCS product held in this range for more than two hours must be discarded immediately
• Active refrigeration or insulated coolers with ice are required during transport and display

These aren't suggestions — they're enforceable requirements. If the Tennessee Department of Health investigates a foodborne illness complaint, temperature management documentation is one of the first things they'll examine.

The Production Date Mandate

HB 130 added a new labeling requirement specifically for TCS products: the exact date of production must appear on every label. For shelf-stable products, a production date has always been recommended but not technically mandated by the TFFA. For TCS items, it's now required by statute.

This date serves a dual purpose: it gives consumers freshness information and creates a traceability record that the Department of Health can use in illness investigations.

What HB 130 Did Not Change

The amendment left several core TFFA principles intact:

• No annual sales cap. Tennessee still imposes no revenue limit on cottage food operations. The 2025 expansion didn't add one for TCS products either.
• No state licensing or routine inspections. TCS home producers are exempt from permits and routine kitchen inspections, same as non-TCS producers.
• No mandatory food safety training. The state doesn't require a food handler certificate for any TFFA-covered operation.
• Local preemption. Cities and counties still can't layer food-specific permits or inspections on top of the TFFA. The preemption applies to TCS products the same way it applies to shelf-stable ones.
• The restaurant prohibition. All TFFA products — including the new TCS categories — are banned from sale to restaurants as menu ingredients.

What Stayed Prohibited

HB 130 expanded the TFFA, but it didn't make everything legal:

• Raw (unpasteurized) milk — still completely banned
• Red meat (beef, pork, lamb) — requires USDA or state inspection
• Fish and shellfish — excluded from home-kitchen production
• Wild game — not covered
• Alcohol above 0.5% ABV — prohibited under the TFFA and outside the home-kitchen exemption

Practical Impact

HB 130 roughly doubled the product categories available to Tennessee home food producers. A home baker who previously maxed out at cookies and bread can now sell cheesecakes. A small farmer can sell eggs and cooked chicken. A dairy enthusiast can produce and sell butter and yogurt.

The constraint is the in-person-only sales channel — these products can't scale through e-commerce or retail distribution the way shelf-stable goods can. For many producers, TCS products become a premium add-on at farmers markets rather than the core of their product line.

The Tennessee Cottage Food & Home Food Business Guide covers the full HB 130 framework, including product classification workflows, temperature tracking logs, and labeling templates designed for TCS compliance.

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