Cottage food rules
Texas Cottage Food Law and Eggs: What You Can Sell
What the 2025 expansion means for selling eggs from your kitchen, in plain words.
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What to remember
- Shell eggs qualify as Texas cottage food products after the 2025 expansion.
- Direct to consumer egg sales can go up to $150,000.
- Cottage food production operation foods may be sold at farmers markets.
- Texas state law blocks local fees or permits for cottage food production, sale, or sampling.
- Labeling rules for cottage food operations come under 25 Tex. Admin. Code 229.661.
If you already sell bread, cookies, or cakes from home, eggs are a natural add on. They travel well, they sell in simple cartons, and a customer at the market table often wants a dozen to take home with the loaf. The catch is that a law page is only as good as its current wording, so read this as a plain language summary and check the state’s own pages before you print anything. Our guide to the Texas cottage food law disclaimer walks through the wording side of things.
What changed for eggs in 2025
SB 541 expanded the Texas cottage food law in 2025, and the DSHS ruling that followed put shell eggs on the list of cottage food products eligible for direct to consumer sales, up to $150,000. That dollar figure is the one to keep in your head. It is a sales ceiling, so track your egg sales and your bake sales together as the year goes on, rather than trying to work it out in December from a shoebox of receipts.
Selling eggs also means being honest about volume. A small flock gives you a steady trickle, and a trickle is easy to keep in a notebook or in your Brevl inventory. What you do not want is a standing weekly order you promised before you counted, so count first and promise second.
Where you can sell and what it costs
Foods produced at a Texas cottage food production operation may be sold at farmers markets, and the operation has to comply with the guidelines required in the cottage food law. On money, Texas state law prohibits a local health department or a local government from requiring fees or permits from cottage food producers for the production, sale, or sampling of their food.
Do not let the eggs run ahead of the paperwork. Keep one folder for your sales records, your labels, and the state pages you relied on. Cottage food rules do change, and a clean record of what you did and when is worth more than a good memory.
Your label still matters
The purpose of 25 Tex. Admin. Code 229.661 is to implement Texas Health and Safety Code Chapter 437 for cottage food production operations, and it requires the department to adopt rules for labeling. In plain terms, eggs sold under the cottage food law are still cottage food, so the label conversation does not go away just because the product is not baked. Build the label once, keep a file you can print from your phone, and update it when the state updates the rules.
If you want to see how another state words its cottage food label rules, our Oregon cottage food label guide is a useful comparison. And if you are looking at how two states handle the same product, our piece on Ohio cottage food laws and eggs covers the egg question somewhere else.
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Common questions
Can I sell eggs from my own backyard in Texas?
Yes. After the 2025 expansion through SB 541, DSHS ruled that shell eggs qualify as cottage food products eligible for direct to consumer sales up to $150,000.
Is there a dollar limit on egg sales?
Yes. The DSHS ruling covers direct to consumer sales up to $150,000. Keep your egg sales and bake sales together in one record so you always know where you stand.
Do I need a permit or pay a fee to my city or county?
Texas state law prohibits a local health department or a local government from requiring fees or permits from cottage food producers for the production, sale, or sampling of their food.
Can I sell eggs at a farmers market?
Foods produced at a cottage food production operation may be sold at farmers markets, and the operation must comply with the guidelines required in the cottage food law.
Do I still need a label on eggs?
Yes. 25 Tex. Admin. Code 229.661 implements Texas Health and Safety Code Chapter 437 for cottage food production operations and requires the department to adopt rules for labeling.
Sources
This is general information about Texas cottage food rules, not legal advice. Cottage food law changes, so confirm the current wording with the state before you sell or print labels.