Business, Craft Beer•
on April 22nd, 2014•
Following an upheaval of concern over the FDA’s proposed rule regarding brewers’ use of spent grains, the FDA has announced that it plans to revise the language of the proposed rule. The newly revised language should be released for additional public comment sometime this coming summer. The previously proposed rule would have required brewers to dry their used, wet spent grains and pre-package them before shipping to farmers for various uses. The cost associated with this likely would have dramatically changed existing relationships between brewers and farmers across the U.S.
The revised proposed rules appear, from what has been released to the American Malting Barley Association and the Beer Institute by the FDA, to be considerably less invasive and stringent. The revised proposed rules will likely focus on ensuring the cleanliness of the silos that hold the spent grain and the trucks that transports the spent grain to farms (with no apparent requirements to dry or pre-package the spent grains). While there may be some additional cost associated with this process, it will undoubtedly be less than what brewers (and farmers) may have incurred under the previous proposed rules. The picture should become more clear when the revised proposed rules are released this summer.
Business, Craft Beer•
on April 8th, 2014•
North Carolina is the proud home of about 100 breweries and Asheville regularly challenges Grand Rapids, MI and a number of cities and towns in Colorado (and elsewhere) for the honor of Beer City USA. It is estimated that North Carolina breweries have an impact of about $791 million on the North Carolina economy. Locally, Foothills Brewing has been an integral part of the Winston-Salem and Piedmont Triad economy for several years, while Small Batch Beer Co. and Hoots Beer Co. have grown steadily in the craft beer scene since opening within the past year. Typically, especially with larger craft breweries, spent grains from the brewing process makes its way to farms, where it is used to feed farm animals (and less traditionally thought of farm animals– worms and tilapia).
However, a new animal food rule promulgated by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as the FDA works to implement the Food Safety Modernization Act (signed into law in 2011) threatens to end that symbiotic relationship between brewers and farmers. The new rule, which appears to be a heavy-handed FDA interpretation of the Act, will likely make that relationship too costly to maintain (for both farmers and brewers). In short, the rule will require any such byproduct to be prepackaged, so as to avoid human contact, before it is received by the farm. According to a national Brewers Association, which conducted a member survey in 2013, approximately 90% of the spent grain produced by beer-makers is fed to livestock. Where will much of the spent grain go if the FDA rule is in place and makes the brewer/farmer relationship too expensive to maintain? Most likely the landfill.
At least one US Senator from Colorado has opened dialogue with the FDA, with the goal of reducing the heavy-handed interpretation of the Act. Unfortunately, the comment time period for the proposed rule has already closed, and the FDA will issue the final rule sometime later this year. There is more than enough documented data and evidence, over many decades, that spent grain byproduct does not compromise food safety to animals or humans. Hopefully the FDA will reexamine its interpretation of the law, and make adjustments that will be manageable for craft breweries all over the country.
Read more about this FDA rule and its impact in Colorado and North Carolina here and here.
