Selling home-made produce?

[Masco&Bongo]

Hi guys

Been talking with my OH (always dangerous!) and we were discussing selling stuff (that we've grown or made) to the public...

A few things came up with regards to stuff:
1) Is it legal? If we sell jam, would we need a health & hygiene certificate or something?
2) Does that go for eggs as well?

We'd though about either asking the local greengrocers to sell it, or doing a stall at a car boot. The reason it came up is that our godson came home with a letter from school saying that at fairs, fetes etc, no home made cakes could be accepted for the cake stall due to health & hygiene reasons etc.

Any ideas what's legal/safe?

Thanks

Shelley

[hedgewizard]

Depends on the scale, I expect. Roadside or "friendly" sales are pretty much ignored, but if you're scaling up you might want to look into the legal side of it.

Eggs - if washing use warm water (cold water soaks through the shell for some reason), we date stamp ours for the date laid.

[Wormella]

There was a thread along similar lines on the River Cottage forum

[dmwcarol]

I'm pretty sure that if any cooking is involved you need a food hygiene certificate - they're fairly easy to obtain though, our local college does regular courses and I know that organisations like the WI do too.

If you just want to sell produce you should be ok, although if you're selling regularly you should look into the tax implications as it could be classed as a second income.

Carol