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Beer Price Crisis On the Horizon

Posted by timothy on from the overarmed-and-overreaching dept.

Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes "The aficionados of beer and distilled spirits could be in for a major price-shock, if proposals by the Food and Drug Administration come to pass. Currently, breweries are allowed to sell unprocessed brewing by-products to feed farm animals. Farmers prize the nutritious, low-cost feed. But, new rules proposed by the FDA could force brewers to implement costly processing facilities or dump the by-products as waste. As one brewer put it, "Beer prices would go up for everybody to cover the cost of the equipment and installation.""

24 of 397 comments (clear)

  1. So - who's in love with the government again? by Penguinisto · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, really... this is getting nuts.

    I get the whole general protection of the average citizen from crimes, but we really need to shrink the reach and scope of these bastards.

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    1. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's pretty difficult to argue with them when they haven't provided a reason for why we need to keep a safe, nutritious, low-cost food out of the hands of farmers.

    2. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Because they themselves admitted they have no reason to believe this is actually harmful at the moment. They're preemptively banning things, which should be considered unacceptable in any truly free country.

    3. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You make an interesting complaint but you provide no argument or evidence that the government doesn't have a good reason to propose this rule.

      But you see that is exactly his point, he should not have to present anything in order to prevent the government enacting a new rule. It should be up to the government to present an argument or evidence that this proposed rule is not only a good idea, but necessary. When the government proposes a new rule, the first reaction of a free people should be, "Not until you convince me that it is necessary for this branch of government to implement this rule."

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    4. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by Ichijo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And, "not until you've tested it on a small scale and put in a sunset clause in case it doesn't work as expected."

      --
      Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
    5. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by stephenmac7 · · Score: 1, Insightful

      There is an obvious reason the government has such a large reach: they think they can fix everything with just the right laws, programs, and agencies. For the most part, it seems most citizens agree with them. Think about any government program or agency and there will be someone who doesn't want it to be cut. It's easier to add more things to make people happy than to remove some and anger people. It seems that the longer a government exists, the more bloating it will become, which would probably be why most countries only last for about a maximum of three hundred years. Seems the United States is past it's expiration date.

      --
      "No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session." -- Judge Gideon J. Tucker
    6. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by MouseTheLuckyDog · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Uhm. According to the article brewers and farmers have been doing this for a 100 years. If this was inherently unsafe, we would know by now.

    7. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You make an interesting complaint but you provide no argument or evidence that the government doesn't have a good reason to propose this rule.

      But you see that is exactly his point, he should not have to present anything in order to prevent the government enacting a new rule.

      Umm, but his posting on Slashdot is not intended "to prevent the government enacting a new rule." His post here is presumably to participate in a reasonable discussion or debate about the subject in question. Ideally, many of us come here to read insightful and informed comments that elucidate some elements of the TFA. With this in mind, it would be more helpful to give a few details or arguments along with your rant.

      You're right that government should be required to have a strong justification for action, and this particular rule has some questionable qualities.

      But GGP is not arguing with the government here. He's participating in a discussion -- and many of us would like to understand WHY this rule might not make any sense (as well as why it might). As far as I can tell, GGP's post was simply a rant about government regulation in general -- perhaps a justified one -- as is yours.

      But it would be more on topic and actually lead to an interesting and informed discussion HERE to have posts that "provide argument of evidence" (in the GP's words) about why this rule may be good (i.e., why it was proposed in the first place) AND what it may be bad... rather than just a standard Slashdot pile-on of "Get 'dat dag-gone gub'ment outa' my life!" I have libertarian tendencies too, but reading crap like this without any further substance can get boring.

    8. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by jopsen · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's pretty difficult to argue with them when they haven't provided a reason for why we need to keep a safe, nutritious, low-cost food out of the hands of farmers.

      From TFA it seems you might in fact be right.. Quote:

      “We don’t know of any problems,” McChesney said. “But we’re trying to get to a preventative mode.”

      But that quote could in fact be a misrepresentation... More so, it seems from TFA that they are talking about ending an exception for breweries. IMO it is important to be able to trace food poisoning to their sources. All other components in the industrialized food chain can be traced. It certainly seems unreasonable that large breweries, to which is would incur little cost, doesn't have proper testing and tracking.


      Cry freedom all you want, but when something goes bad in the industrialized food chain, millions of innocent people are affected. And if there is no trace, fixing the problem may take months or years.

      Either way, I suspect slashdotters aren't experts in risk analysis for this field, so maybe we should just leave it to the experts. It's just proposed, farmers and breweries still have a say.

    9. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by jopsen · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Because they themselves admitted they have no reason to believe this is actually harmful at the moment. They're preemptively banning things, which should be considered unacceptable in any truly free country.

      They are proposing that an exception is revoked, so that all components of the industrialized food chain can be traced. Whether, this particular decision in that matter is of significance, is hard to say...

      Either way, head lines such as "Beer prices could go up" is not the way to debate this :)

    10. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by LordKronos · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Uhm. According to the article brewers and farmers have been doing this for a 100 years. If this was inherently unsafe, we would know by now.

      I love that logic. By your reasoning, we had been using asbestos for 4500 years, so surely if there was something inherently unsafe about it, we would have known about it 4400 years ago.

    11. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is all a tempest in a teapot. The FDA is proposing rules for complying with a 2011 law passed by congress to ensure food safety. Brewers had been exempt from the rule because they were able to buy off congresscritters in the past. Now they will have to keep records and conduct training to make sure that they aren't shipping contaminated waste grain to feed cows. People who love to eat cows should welcome the fact that they can be assured that their cows haven't been fed contaminated feed.
      All of the hysteria about driving brewers out of business is just hyperbole. Before these rules, brewers could ship contaminated, spoiled grain to feed cows without any accountability. Now they will be accountable to make sure that they don't feed cows garbage... seems reasonable.
      You can read the FDA regulation (and avoid the hysterical hype) here:
      http://www.fda.gov/Food/Guidan...

      I haven't heard of anyone talking about driving brewers out of business wholesale, but any increase in operating cost is going to have negative repercussions for a business, which may mean lower profits, leading to reduced employment. That's just the way these things work. Note that this could also have a ripple effect, such as increasing the price of milk, since farmers have been able to rely on this cheap and nutritious feed for a long time.

      You mentioned "they could have" in your response, but I could counter with "they never have so far", which seems a more powerful argument. This practice has been going on for over a century with apparently no real trouble, and suddenly the brewers are going to poison the farmer's cattle? It seems a bit far-fetched, since after all, these are the by-products of human-consumable beverages. I'd be more apt to support this if there was a documented history of problems with this practice.

      Government, by it's nature, tends to want to create more and more rules and regulations. I think that's part of the natural desire to proactively protect against problems, but it's also has slightly less noble purposes as well. More regulations essentially means the government has to grow to enforce those regulations. It's in the FDA's own self-interest to pass as many rules and regulations as it can, because then it's "business" grows. That means those in the FDA can move up their own "corporate ladder", so to speak.

      Government regulations have to be viewed as a necessary evil. All but the most die-hard libertarians or anarchists would say we need no regulations, but there's always a careful balancing act that must be made between the imposed overhead of these regulations and the benefits they provide in terms of safety, reliability, and consumer rights. So, I think it's worth questioning whether the imposed cost of this new proposal is worth the imposed overhead and costs.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    12. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by pepty · · Score: 2, Insightful

      In this case the consequence is (FTA) between $0 and $30 per 2000 gallons of beer. I.e., about one cent per sixpack.

    13. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by pepty · · Score: 3, Insightful
      How about reading more than the headline and the comments to see if the government has a point?

      FDA rule would require brewers and distillers to keep extensive records to allow for traceability in the event of a problem, and to adopt new safety procedures, for example by storing and shipping spent grain in closed sanitized containers.

      Is that really so unreasonable? If records aren't kept there's a chance problems have been missed. And oh, the horror of having to ship animal food in containers that have actually been cleaned.

    14. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by radarskiy · · Score: 1, Insightful

      "It should be up to the government to present an argument or evidence that this proposed rule is not only a good idea, but necessary. "

      You have assumed that this did not occur. Your failure to pay attention is not a failure of democracy.

    15. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by jageryager · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If the brewer can not sell or give away the spent grains w/out incurring significant expense, they'll probably do something easier, like dump it in a land fill. _That_ will cost money. It's a drain on the economy any way you dice it, all to solve a problem that doesn't exist..

      --
      "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-B.Franklin
    16. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by Predius · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You're assuming they can dispose of the material for $0 per ton instead. I believe that you'll find is not the case.

    17. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by haruchai · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Each brewery will have to spend $13 million for drying and packaging?? HIGHLY doubtful, especially since the stuff is already being picked up several times a day.

      If the regs go forward, what will happen is that it'll go to a centralized facility to be processed and the origin of each batch will be tracked there.
      That's job creation.

      However, it will probably hurt some of the really small operations who can't fill a truckload on a regular basis or are remote.
      That'll be a pity since some of the little guys make some damn fine suds but this is hardly the death knell of brewing or the explosion of grain dumping.

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
  2. Milk/Beef prices as well? by lagomorpha2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wouldn't eliminating a source of cheap feed also increase milk and beef prices?

  3. Bullshit by Animats · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Brewers get $30 a ton for the waste from beer manufacturing. Per can/bottle of beer, that's negligible.

    Brewers can continue to sell this as animal feed. They just have to follow the same rules as everybody else who sells animal feed, like Purina Chows and Cargill. The big plants will have to do a little more processing and testing. The "craft brewers" don't produce that much waste, and it's biodegradable.

    1. Re:Bullshit by l0ungeb0y · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Brewers get $30 a ton for the waste from beer manufacturing. Per can/bottle of beer, that's negligible.

      You're the one that's full of shit. From the article:

      The equipment and set up to do that would cost about $13 million per facility

      Why don't you tell us how that $13,000,000 cost per brewing facility will be paid off by that $30/ton "profit" and thus be a negligible cost.
      Also, what of the costs to your beef, which will also go up due to the loss or increased cost of feed?

  4. Interstate Commerce Clause by Baldrson · · Score: 3, Insightful

    OK, so tell me where in the Constitution I should look for Federal power to regulate beer that doesn't cross state lines.

    --
    Seastead this.
  5. Re:So I was all "Social contract, move to Somalia" by rossz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And how many people will consider beer waste handling as an important enough issue to vote out someone? None. They're going to be more interested in big ticket items like gay rights or abortion. This is how the government stealthes in an array of regulations that eventually consume our every moment.

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    -- Will program for bandwidth
  6. I'm Not an American but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    What the fuck? You call someone a right wing anti-science nut for questioning a proposal that would have people raging in the streets everywhere else in the free world? Your government did not present any substantial fact to stop that practice, in fact they're trying to "modify" the proposal (sent it down the drain) because they can't find anything wrong with selling the by products. They're probably bought by some cattle feed producer trying to increase gains by preventing farmers to take a cheaper alternative.