Kentucky’s “home bakers” won a victory in a legislative committee in Frankfort Thursday. If the vote in the House Health and Family Services Committee is any indication, these bakers should be able to keep the ovens on.
The legislation sets out home based processors would be excluded from the definition of a retail store. During testimony, Fort Mitchell baker Joanna Skeen says the health department shut down her home business about a year ago. Skeen says she tied renting a commercial kitchen at about 25 dollars an hour. “What I do is very custom, intricate designs on cookies and sometimes a batch of cookies may take a couple days to bake, to ice, and to detail and produce before I give them to a customer and it financially wasn’t feasible,” said Skeen
Skeen says home bakers would still be required to register with health departments. Erica Smith with the Institute for Justice says Kentucky is one of only two states nationally without this type of cottage industry legislation.
