FDA Revising Spent Grain Proposed Rules… Brewers Breathe Sigh of Relief
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.
