Are you interested in creating a more sustainable food future for yourself and your neighbors? Not sure how to start, or what rules and regulations you’ll have to follow?

The Long Beach Health Department is hosting a free workshop to learn all the details of what it takes to cook and sell healthy food made in your own kitchen. Tonight is as good a time as any to join the sustainable food movement, and to join knowing you’re doing it right.

The Long Beach Health Department’s free workshop, “Cottage Food Operations: Launch a Food Business from your Home,” is being held in an effort to teach the important requirements necessary to become a cottage food operator, which includes safely processing food and making the proper food labels. The workshop will take place on September 23, from 6:00PM to 7:30PM at the Miller Family Health Education Center, 3820 Cherry Ave., Long Beach.

In celebration of the 20th year of National Food Safety Education Month (NFSEM), the Health Department is hosting this workshop in an effort to continue providing opportunities for food safety education.

The recent movement toward providing much-needed locally-sourced and sustainable food options statewide has increased the demand for home-based food businesses. In support of this move toward locally grown, healthy food, state legislature passed the California Cottage Food Bill in 2013, allowing individuals to make certain approved, nonperishable foods from their private kitchens at home, an act previously prohibited by State law. Cottage foods may now be sold at farmers’ markets, special events, homes and in certain cases restaurants and markets.

For more information on the cottage industry workshop, please contact Monica Cardenas at (562) 570-4494 or [email protected]. For additional information on Cottage Food visit www.longbeach.gov/health or www.foodsafety.gov.