Home › State guides › South Carolina
Selling homemade food in South Carolina means your label has to follow the South Carolina Home-based Food Production (HBFP) Law — S.C. Code Ann. § 44-1-143; administered by the South Carolina Department of Agriculture (SCDA) since 1 July 2024 (it was DHEC before). No licence, no permit and no mandatory registration; the SCDA identification number is voluntary and only replaces your home address on the label. Here is exactly what that label must show in 2026 — the required fields, the allergen rule, and the verbatim disclaimer and its font size — sourced to the statute and dated.
Print this statement on the label, word for word:
The statement must be printed in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, in a color that clearly contrasts with the background. The statute sets no minimum type size — no point value is claimed. Heads-up: Appendix A of SCDA's own July 2025 guidance reprints the pre-2022 statute, whose statement begins “NOT FOR RESALE-”. Those words were struck by S.506, effective 23 May 2022, when sales through retail stores became legal; the wording above is the one in force, and it matches SCDA's chapter 7 and its label quick guide.
South Carolina does not call it 'cottage food' — the legal category is a 'Home-Based Food Production Operation' under § 44-1-143. The label's centerpiece is a single mandated all-caps warning sentence; getting that verbatim string and its all-caps/clear-contrast formatting right is the core compliance ask. A distinctive SC quirk: the producer may omit their home ADDRESS and instead print a DPH-issued identification number — useful for home sellers who don't want their residence on every jar. The name of the operation must still appear; only the address may be swapped for the ID number.
The statute fixes the exact words: 'PROCESSED AND PREPARED BY A HOME-BASED FOOD PRODUCTION OPERATION THAT IS NOT SUBJECT TO SOUTH CAROLINA'S FOOD SAFETY REGULATIONS.' It must be all capital letters in a color that clearly contrasts the background. Lowercase, a softened rewrite, or low-contrast text fails the rule.
SC does not require a permit/registration number on the label. The operation's name is always required; the department-issued identification number is only an optional substitute for the ADDRESS (per § 44-1-143(D)(1)), used when the operator does not want their home address printed. Don't treat it as replacing the name too, and don't treat it as a mandatory permit number.
§ 44-1-143 requires the statement be all-caps with clear contrast, but sets no minimum point size. Do not print a specific pt requirement as if it were law; if a customer wants a size guarantee, tell them to confirm with SC DPH.
§ 44-1-143 lists only business name/address (or ID), product name, ingredients by weight, and the warning. Federal FALCPA allergen disclosure still applies to packaged foods, and net-weight labeling is standard practice — build the label to include them even though the state section is silent.
Timeline: Registration/inspection processing with SC DPH is typically a few weeks; label content itself can be finalized immediately once the required elements are set.
Cost: $0 — no state fee is required to make a compliant label; SC home-based food registration itself is generally low- or no-cost (confirm current fee, if any, with SC DPH).
Cottage food laws get revised, and a new disclaimer or font size can quietly make your label non-compliant. Leave your email and we'll write to you only when South Carolina's cottage food label rules change. Nothing else, ever — and you can unsubscribe from any message.
Enter your recipe and get a print-ready label with the exact South Carolina wording, ingredients ordered by weight and allergens auto-declared. Free watermarked preview; clean PDF for $12.
Make my South Carolina label →South Carolina requires this exact statement on a cottage food label: “PROCESSED AND PREPARED BY A HOME-BASED FOOD PRODUCTION OPERATION THAT IS NOT SUBJECT TO SOUTH CAROLINA'S FOOD SAFETY REGULATIONS.” The state sets no minimum point size for it.
No. South Carolina does not require a permit or registration number printed on the label.
At minimum: product name — the common name of the food; your business / producer name; the address of the cottage food operation; a complete ingredient list, in descending order by weight (sub-ingredients included); an allergen declaration — the 9 major FDA allergens, in the ingredient list or a “Contains:” line; net weight, in US customary and metric units; the state's required disclaimer (see below).
No. CottageCompliance gives general information based on each state's published rules, dated to when we last verified them. Always confirm with your state or local agency before selling.
Source: S.C. Code Ann. § 44-1-143(D) (label), (E) (sales), (G) ($1,500 threshold), as amended by 2023 Act No. 60 — scstatehouse.gov. SCDA “Home-based Food Production Law Guidance”, v1.4, July 2025 (chapters 2 and 7, appendix E). Verified 2026-08-10. General information, not legal advice — confirm with your state or local agency before selling.