Industry
Selling fermented foods at Ontario farmers markets: laws, labels
Selling fermented foods at Ontario farmers markets means knowing which laws apply, how your health unit decides, and what must be on every jar label.
What to take away
- Ontario has no cottage food law. Your local public health unit enforces the Health Protection and Promotion Act and the Food Premises Regulation, O. Reg. 493/17, on the kitchen you use.
- Fermented vegetables sit in a grey zonesome health units call them low risk, others treat the process as one that needs an inspected premises.
- A prepackaged jar needs a common name, metric net quantity, your business name and address, an ingredient list and a date code.
- Batch, temperature and sales records are the first thing an inspector asks to see.
- Selling without approval can end in a written order to stop, with product embargoed and destroyed.
Who regulates fermented vegetables in Ontario
The Health Protection and Promotion Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. H.7, governs food premises in Ontario. It lets each of the province's 34 public health units inspect a premises and order a business to stop.
That is the unit where your kitchen sits, and it is the unit you deal with, not the market you drive to. Toronto Public Health, Ottawa Public Health, Peel Public Health and the rest each run their own food safety program, and each answers the vendor question for itself: whether your operation counts as a food premises, and what it needs before a stall opens.
Who regulates your ferment
- Health unit inspects your premises
- Food Premises Regulation sets requirements
- Health Canada sets federal labelling
- Cross-border sales: Safe Food for Canadians
The Food Premises Regulation, O. Reg. 493/17, sets construction, sanitation, temperature and training requirements for any premises that prepares food.
The training requirement catches market vendors too. Ontario expects the people who handle your jars to know food safety, and a certificate from a recognized food handler course is how most vendors show it.
Health Canada sits above that, setting the federal position on unsafe food and on labelling at Health Canada's food safety pages.
The federal lane reaches you when you import, export or sell across a provincial border, where the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations apply. A vendor selling only inside Ontario usually sits outside that licensing, though the Food and Drugs Act still bans selling unsafe food.
What a home operation may and may not do
Health units differ. Some inspect home kitchens for low-risk products. Others refuse and tell the vendor to rent a commercial kitchen. The deciding factor is usually whether the food is potentially hazardous, and fermented vegetables are argued both ways.
Home kitchen or commercial?
Is your fermented vegetable potentially hazardous?
permitted premises, calibrated thermometers, written process
some health units inspect home kitchens
The safety of the jar rests on the process. Salt concentration, temperature and time do the work, not a vinegar bath. An inspector who reads it that way wants a permitted premises with calibrated thermometers and a written process. A rented kitchen changes batch size, staffing and cold storage, and Commercial-scale limits explains how small producers plan around those constraints.
What you cannot do in any health unit: sell from an uninspected kitchen once your operation is a food premises, store finished jars in a garage or shed, or refill a jar a customer returned.
What a compliant label carries
A jar you fill and close before sale is prepackaged, and prepackaged food sold in Canada carries a fixed set of elements.
| Element | What it must show |
|---|
Prepackaged jar label elements
- Common namesauerkraut, not a slogan
- Net quantity in metric grams or millilitres
- Business name and town of principal place
- Ingredients by descending weight, including brine
- Allergens by source, including sulphites
- Best before date if keeps 90 days or less
- English and French on most prepackaged foods
Each element carries its own rule:
- Common namethe product name, such as sauerkraut, kimchi or mixed vegetable ferment, not a brand slogan.
- Net quantitythe net amount in the jar, in metric units.
- Dealer name and addressyour business name and the address of the place that fills the jar.
- Ingredient listvegetables, salt and seasonings in descending order by weight.
- Sulphite declarationrequired when sulphites are present at or above the level the Food and Drug Regulations set.
- Date codea pack date or best-before date that ties the jar to a batch.
- Storage and allergen informationhow to keep the jar, and any priority allergen it contains.
In Canada, the common name, net quantity and dealer identity come from the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act and its regulations, while the ingredient, sulphite and date rules sit in the Food and Drug Regulations.
The common name cannot be vague. Sauerkraut names one product, and a mixed vegetable ferment is another, so the label should say which one the buyer is holding.
Sulphites in some vegetable ferments must be declared once they reach the level set in the Food and Drug Regulations. A business the CFIA treats as small is exempt from the nutrition facts table, but that exemption removes nothing else.
Notes kept with each batch are what make a recall possible. Fermentation labels and notes shows what a usable record holds.
Records worth keeping from day one
An inspector at your stall will ask what you can show. Keep these for at least a year:
- Batch sheet
- the date, the recipe and the salt ratio for each batch.
- Temperature log
- the room or vessel temperature during fermentation.
- pH readings
- the reading at packing and any later check.
- Jar count and fill date
- how many jars a batch filled and when.
- Sales record
- which market, stall or customer received which batch.
- Complaint and recall notes
- what a customer reported and what you did about it.
- Cold storage log
- holding temperatures for jars kept chilled.
The point is traceability: one bad jar should lead you to a batch, not to your whole table.
Batch records to keep one year
- Batch sheetdate, vegetable, salt weight, total weight
- Daily temperature of the fermenting space
- Final pH or titratable acidity, if taken
- Supplier name and lot code for every box
- Sales record showing where each batch went
- Cold storage and market display holding temperatures
Cold storage belongs in the record too. Market displays are often chilled, and holding temperatures should be logged the same way. Storing small batch ferments covers what shifts in the jar when the cold chain slips.
What the market itself asks for
A health unit approval does not get you a table. Markets run on their own paperwork, and food vendors are usually asked for more than craft sellers: a signed vendor agreement, proof of liability insurance, and confirmation that your local health unit has seen your operation. The market manager holds that file and is the person an inspector calls when something at your stall looks wrong. Settle both layers before you pay for a stall.
Example: a stall told to stop
Picture a seller with twenty jars of kraut on a market table, a label that reads "small batch kraut", and no paperwork. An inspector from the local health unit walks the aisle on a Saturday morning.
The inspector can issue an order under the Health Protection and Promotion Act requiring the seller to stop. Product can be embargoed and destroyed on the spot, and the market manager is told, which usually suspends the stall agreement. How a commercial kitchen catches a bad batch before it ships is worth reading if you plan to supply a store.
