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Daily Bread for 12.31.22: A Victory for Home-Based Wisconsin Businesses

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 38. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:31 PM for 9h 05m 47s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 66% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1999, the first President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, resigns from office, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the acting President and successor.


Daniela Jaime reports Wisconsin residents can sell more than baked goods from home, judge rules:

Wisconsinites who want to sell homemade goodies to friends, neighbors and the public no longer have to stick to baked goods like cakes and cookies.

Dane County Circuit Court Judge Rhonda Lanford ruled this week that other nonhazardous food items, not just baked goods, can be made and sold from home without a commercial license or kitchen, which plaintiffs argued can be cost-prohibitive. That includes items like candy, cocoa bombs, fried donuts and roasted coffee beans.

Many of those who want to sell homemade goods are people like moms with young children who hope to make a bit of money by selling the items they make at home.

This week’s ruling is the second victory for a trio of women — B&B owner Lisa Kivirist, 56, and farmers Dela Ends, 69, and Kriss Marion, 54 — who have been fighting for years to be able to sell nonhazardous food items from home.

The women won their first lawsuit against the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection in 2017, successfully arguing that a state ban on the sale of home-baked goods to the public was unconstitutional.

In February 2021, they filed a follow-up lawsuit arguing that Wisconsin residents should be able to sell other shelf-stable goods out of their homes, too, like roasted coffee beans and hot cocoa bombs.

“The first case said that the government can’t ban the sales of perfectly safe homemade baked goods. And so, since we already had that victory regarding baked goods, it definitely made things easier the second time around,” said Justin Pearson of the Institute for Justice, the organization that represented the plaintiffs in both cases.

“If you’re allowing people to bake cookies and muffins and breads, why should they not be allowed to make cocoa bombs?” Marion asked.

See also Institute for Justice, Victory for Wisconsin Home Bakers.

The decision was handed down this week, and there’s no word yet on whether the government will appeal. 


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