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Beer Price Crisis On the Horizon
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.""
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?
You can count on us Canadians to provide you with quality beer that isn't watered down and has actual kick to it! Though you will have to occasionally deal with Molson, and perhaps some weird off-brands, or something oddly flavored for the trendy folks at the centre-of-the-univerise(Toronto).
Om, nomnomnom...
Wouldn't eliminating a source of cheap feed also increase milk and beef prices?
So, not feeding the beer by-products to cows will acidify the oceans???
Who knew?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Nothing else to say...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Better living through regulation strikes again. It is part of a well oiled machine.
Obama: My Plan Makes Electricity Rates Skyrocket
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
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.
How does recycling beer-brewing waste as a cheap, nutritious animal feed instead of burying it in a landfill contribute to ocean acidification?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
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.
We should try to follow the money more when such rules are implemented.
Who benefits the most from this? Big, big breweries who feel probably threatened by people who brew good beer (as a Dutch colleague of me said, they make Heineken by pumping the Maas water into the bottles).
This is a US problem. What company bought (more or less recently) a US brewery? Those Brasilian pump-and-dumpers do not know anything about beer, only about making money by selling something that resembles beer and manipulating the stock market, and since it is rather easy in the US to bribe officials, this really looks a move from their side.
We are not here to decide if we are paranoid, but to decide if we are paranoid enough.
I love to know exactly what kind of pathogen they're envisioning - something that infects the mash (which admittedly is a rich culture, and if it starts out sterile it's not going to stay that way for long) and then infects the cows in a way that will be a problem for humans. E. coli is already in the cows (hence the regulations concerning the use of fresh manure on crops likely to be eaten raw) and cows will do a lot of their own processing. Milk products are generally pasteurized anyway. Somehow I'm not exactly seeing a spent grain prion vector...
I'm doubting this will go through. Now, if they're really worried, funding a small study to look at whether it's a likely vector might make sense.
(Not that I'd be sad to see more spent-grain bread. Tasty, that.)
The article details how this is a preventative measure for food poisoning. It isn't requiring brewers to throw away spent grain, but it hypothesizes that will happen. What it does require is that brewers properly pack the spent grain as animal feed so that it can be tested to prevent food poisoning or tracked in the case of an outbreak.
The article says that there are no known problems, but there is no mechanism in place to find any. All other feed producers for animals need to be accountable for their product.
Also, on the cost side, it's bullshit. Brewers barely get any revenue from this (one gets $30 a ton), and they always have the option of throwing away the spent grain. While I'm not happy about the waste, it won't result in any price increase.
Clowns on the left want to over-regulate, jokers on the right want to under-regulate, stuck in the middle without brew.
Forget the beer price...think of the cows! No more 'brewing by-products.' That's gotta be a whole lot better than what the replacement will be.
If you RTFA, and even the headline, there is no problem here for the brewers, except for the one example in which the waste was sold to a broker. In this case the waste would be worth less so they might not be able to get any money, so the extra $30 might be amortized over the ton of beer. This, by my calculation would add a penny or two per beer.
So the problem is the farmer. If there is demand,and assuming that giving away the waste to a broker is cheaper than landfilling it, which in my experience it is, then there will be a marginal additional cost to the farmer. For the small farmer, who can just go to the brewery and collect the waste, the cost will just be transportation and labor. We used to do this for the cash crops we grew, collect waste, bring it to the farm, compost it, and use it for free.
For bigger operations, they will have to pay a broker and processor. This is a consequence of mass produced food. We have to have extra precautions because when something does happen, no one is really held responsible.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
That's the reason for political correctness: to expand the scope of government past immediate risks to ideological risks. It's a power grab.
The correct way to deal with this is not to be anti-politically correct, but to stop being politically correct. That deprives government of its justification for its new powers.
Futurist Traditionalism
Not everyone drinks regularly and not everyone is living in America -- the rest of us deserve a world without acidified oceans.
And the rest of us deserve some of whatever it is you're smoking. Or drinking.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
His point is that the moment the brewer are getting next to nothing they are just giving up waste and getting 30$ per tonne, so it is an infinitesimal part of the beer price. The question is only, how much it would cost them per ton to get ride of the waste. Here around it is about 200 to 400 euro per tons of fully biodegradable waste without toxic inside, which I think would be the case for the waste mentionned. I doubt it will be much higher in the US. And when you reach tons of waste you are not doing " a few beer".
Recent CNN report on the prices of beef and dairy: http://money.cnn.com/2014/04/1...
This will increase the cost to farmers too. That gets passed on to consumers. But perhaps we're all just commenting on the obvious: Production cost of X increases. The production cost of any product Y directly (or transitively) dependent upon X will also increase (or the value/quality of Y may decrease to compensate).
They have elections every four years. If the people find this untolerable, that's the time to choose some-one whose platform is to deregulate.
(I know. That would be a memorable day in the annals of porcine aviation.)
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.
Even pre-industrial humanity had that one figured out. Hell, even pre-historical humanity had it figured out.
Less beer-brewing waste recycling means less efficient beer breweries, which means less beer breweries, which means less beer produced, which means less drunken brawls in washrooms, which means less broken sinks and urinals, which means less ceramics being thrown into the oceans, which means less acid being absorbed, which means less pH (more acidic) oceans.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
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.
-- Will program for bandwidth
some imports are good
...it troubles me that you call gay rights and abortion "big ticket items" IMHO those two issues shouldn't even be on big gov's. radar, one is a states issue, the other is a personal one... I have an idea... let's have the government do something to HELP the U.S. citizens... you know like get the hell out of the way of the economy and let people get back to work instead of turning people into dependents... ......just an idea.....
MGP Ingredients, which produces a sizeable fraction of the distilled spirits in the US, doesn't seem to have a problem with this. They're already running their distillery by-products through a dryer and turning out dried-grain animal feed. MGP, formerly Midwest Grain Products, takes in grain and turns out a broad range of food and beverage products. They're set up to make and ship food-grade products for humans, so complying with the rules for animal feed isn't a big deal for them.
The liquor industry is different than ads indicate. The "secret family recipe" hype is mostly bullshit. Huge plants in the Midwest produce bulk alcohol, which is then shipped by rail, in tank cars, to companies which perform further processing and bottling. The same ethyl alcohol is used for vodka, gin, rum, scotch, bourbon, brandy, tequila, Canadian whiskies, and liqueurs. MGP also sells some ethyl alcohol for fuel use, although for them it's a sideline, not their main business. They make more alcohol than the booze industry can use.
So, for the big plants, this isn't a problem.
except for it isnt the republicans who are pushing this..... I stand by your statement however if you replace republicans with the actual group who are pushing this
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The FDA proposes tracing the source of all ingredients and livestock feed which causes in an industry, that's currently taking advantage of little regulation on the sale of their by-products, to start issuing press releases on how this is somehow the end of the world as we know it.
Let's negotiate a sensible method of satisfying FDA's concerns and allow the agency to get a handle on processed food safety. I would not be surprised if this is simply someone balking at the thought of paperwork.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
I'll dump my by products or find another way to sell it and keep my price, there by beating the competition.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I'm having trouble understanding how grain that is fit for human consumption isn't good enough to feed cattle, many of which spend most of their days out in the fields eating grass off the ground.
And if you don't understand this, well, you can just fuck off and die, because that is *exactly* how facsists think about *YOU*.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
It's perfectly OK to be against homosexual marriage. It's a right to oppose. Why is it imperative we have allow diversity with all manner of things such as color, creed, being a homosexual, but not with dissenting opinions. Everyone has a right to an opinion and a vote, even if it goes wildly against popular opinion. Voltaire mentioned something similar if you recall...
Society will always have dissenters from popular views. That's OK and should be welcomed, even if those views radically differ and even anger you. I believe homosexuals have the right to do whatever they want under the law, but I will not assist them with normalizing their unnatural behaviors. I'm old enough to remember when one couldn't find a homosexual person easily. They must be putting something in the water, because when I was in junior high and high school, I cannot recall even suspecting someone of being a homosexual, and I attended multiple schools around the world due to my father working for the government. Even in Europe, I never recall seeing more than a couple in many years.
There is very little US-brewed beer that is drinkable. Maybe Sam Adams and some microbreweries but most of the decent ones are imported regardless where these rules don't apply.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Someone thinks that we need to regulate brewers, so they won't ship bad feed to cows. Presumably a farmer wouldn't be able to tell the grain was bad, and would feed it to cows anyway. And then presumably the cows would eat the bad feed, making them sick, unhealthy, but not dead. The butchers would butchers these cows into tainted meat, and sell the meat. Then people would unknowingly eat the tainted meat and get sick. A bigger load of crap I've never seen or heard, Anybody that thinks this regulation is needed is a moron.
What makes you think a farmer would feed spoiled feed to cows. Why would a cow eat spoiled feed? How sick could a cow be and still be sold to slaughter? Who would slaughter _that_ sick cow? How would one sell the meat? If you think this is needed you shouldn't have a vote, because you are a moron.
If you have a concern over a situation like this, you should ask yourself how we can continue to import _ANY_ food from China.. Spend some time on _THAT_ problem, it's an actual problem.
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-B.Franklin
I doubt the ingredients in a bottle of beer cost much more than $0.20.
The real money goes to marketing. After that: taxes, distribution, packaging . . .
Honestly: I would not be surprised if the can costs more to make than the beer that's inside it. I know that's the case with sodas.
The FDA has in fact said there have been no problems, ie the rule is not necessary, but they felt like making some new rules just in case. GP doesn't assume anything - the FDA agrees with his assertion as to the facts. They just feel that they have nothing better to do, so they might as well come up with some new rules. GP believes that new rules need justification.
> 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.
Asbestos was a curiosity until about 1900, when it started to be used a lot. Pliny wrote about the dangers of it 1800 years earlier, in 80 AD. Other people probably knew about the danger earlier, but Pliny's writings are the oldest we still have available for reading on the subject.
If a someone burns a gallon of 90% gas, 10% ethanol, they've only burned 0.9 gallons of gas. Yay, less gas burned! That's the win.
However, people don't drive 1 gallon to work, they drive X miles to get to work. Since the blend has lower mpg, more of it is burned on the same trip. For easy math, let's look at a 33 mile trip, in a car that gets 33 mpg on gas. Using 100% gas, that trip will burn 1 gallon of gas. That's a key number:
33 mile trip = 1 gallon of pure gas
With the blend, the mpg will be about 10% lower, or 30 mpg. Therefore, it will take 1.1 gallons of blend to make the trip.
33 mile trip = 1.1 gallon of blend
Let's divide that blend into its components:
33 mile trip = 1 gallon of gas + 0.1 gallon of ethanol
So what have we saved. In the first instance, we burned one gallon of gas. In the second instance, we burned one gallon of gas, plus .1 gallon of ethanol. We've saved nothing. We have, however, increased the cost of food by wastefully burning corn that could have been eaten.
A lot of smaller breweries don't produce enough grain to sell it, but still give it away because garbage fees aren't cheap, either (some cities even charge additional fees because of the need to buffer the pH in to protect groundwater and other runoff). Or a thankful small-time pig farmer might share some bacon. That and it's good for the environment and local economies, and most micro-breweries are sensitive about both issues.
Anyway, this isn't just about money -- it's about the FDA proposing legislation/paperwork/hassle to fix a problem that doesn't exist. Thankfully, not in a small part due to the actions of brewers and farmers across the country, the FDA has backpedaled and is now re-evaluating the proposal to hopefully come up with something a bit more sane.
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
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.
So, if you think the "big ticket items" are gay rights and abortion, you've bought into the democrats (and most republicans) stealth plan to hide from the "real big ticket items".
A bullet may have your name on it, but artillery is addressed to " Whom It May concern"
Go look at the Congressional voting by region for that Civil Rights Act.
It was FAR more an issue of North vs South than of Republican vs Democrat.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
So you think Farmers should want the Fed Gov't to make it illegal to buy ( or get for free ) brewers grain like they do now? So that the possibility of mycotoxin poison will be reduced? And so those farmers can trace the grain back to the brewer the farmer bought it from? Is that the problem you think the Fed Gov't should be solving for us here? Have you ever worked on a farm?
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-B.Franklin
Homebrew isn't hard to make. Its better than store bought beer and is way cheaper...
Greed is the root of all evil.
The practice of feeding spent mash to farm animals goes back to the origins of brewing. It reminds me of the authorities in Brussels dictating changes in the practices of traditional European cheese makers which would ruin the essential character of their products and destroy their industry. Enacted laws should be implemented only after the bureaucrats ask themselves if it really makes sense to do such things. Otherwise, they should go back to the legislators and say, "We have a problem here." If this doesn't happen, we'll get a nation of inane laws enacted by overbearing bureaucrats . . . oh . . . sorry, we're already there.
"The FDA has in fact said there have been no problems, ie the rule is not necessary,"
The FDA said there have been no problems, but did NOT say the rule is not necessary. The risk exists, it just has not been realized yet; we've been lucky. That is a distinction that any other speaker of the English language would understand.
It's been done for over 100 years, millions of head of cattle fed, and not one has gotten sick. In the same time period, tens of thousands of cattle have gotten sick from grazing on the wrong type of wildflower. Technically, there is some minute risk, but it's a lot less risky than flowers.
Something tells me you are entirely unfamiliar with agriculture. Go spend 10 minutes in any kind of ag facility and then tell me what the FDA should be doing is jacking around with something that's proven safe. You might become a vegetarian for a while after you see your foods rolling around in it's own poop, but you'll definitely realize that feeding human-grade grain to cattle is NOT what anyone should be worried about.
Oh. Okay. I thought you were actually trying to say something.
'But calling people moronic for thinking that farmers never give cows spoiled feed and thinking that cows might still eat it is backwards.' I know farmers give cows spoiled feed. The usually won't eat what is bad for them, but sometimes they do, obviously. Meat Packers usually don't butcher sick cows, but sometimes they do. And meat is usually safe, but sometimes it's not.
My point. ( I was making a point, if it wasn't clear ) was that the chance of bad brewers grain causing a problem in the food supply, is pretty small. Like, it's never been a problem. No reason to think it would be. And Yes, If you are a person who thinks we should force brewers grain to be handled differently, be federal law, to prevent a problem that has never yet happened, I am calling you a moron. I'm not sure you think that though, so I'm probably not calling _you_ a moron.
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-B.Franklin
Only true for carberated cars without oxygen sensors. About .001% of cars running today. Pre-1981 give or take a year or two depending on manufacturer.
Fuel injected/computer controlled carb cars run just as clean on pure gas.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The Bush tax cuts were poised to expire. The 111th Congress, which was held by Democrats (Pelosi was Speaker and Reid was Senate Majority Leader) send an extension to Mr Obama's desk. All the Democrats had to do to kill the Bush tax cuts was...nothing. Not a thing.
But even Democrats seemed to think that the Bush tax cuts, which relieved millions of households from any tax liability (producing a large chunk of the "47% who pay no federal income taxes"), were not so evil after all, for most people. They wanted to keep the Bush tax cuts in place for a majority of "middle" income people. Yes, they wanted to raise taxes on some of the rich, but when they couldn't manage that, they kept the Bush tax cuts in place in toto for another 2 years.
Two years later, the Bush tax cuts might have expired again, for everyone. Again, Democrats didn't want the Bush tax cuts to expire for everyone. Only the rich. This time they managed by extending the Bush tax cuts for almost everyone "permanently" (removing any further sunset), while increasing taxes on the rich.
Want to blame anyone for extending the Bush tax cuts permanently? Look to the Democrats.
Speaking strictly as a small brewer (7 BBL) this would put us out of business. To be honest I think we seem to have pushed it back for now.
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
Amazingly, it could be that the FDA actually listened to the howls of protest (not to mention the poor cattle: did no one consider the cattle?)
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/a...
"The Food and Drug Administration will redraft proposed rules for the use of brewery waste as animal feed after both brewers and farmers complained the plan would impose a burden on the centuries-old practice."
http://craftbeertemple.com/vid... http://www.ratebeer.com/Story.... Most people drink their beer too cold (and drink crap beer), but drinking it at room temperature also isn't really the best for taste. You can do what you want but I like my beer cool. I keep my homebrew in cases then put in the refrigerator for a short amount of time prior to drinking.
When will we have enough regulation? Is there even a theoretical limit to the level of regulation possible? Are there any conceivable regulations for which the above argument or a variant thereof cannot be made?
The pattern is
1. Government policy and poor regulation cause (or invents) a crisis.
2. The government publicly and violently searches for culprits, aided by the MSM, and names the wrong parties--usually in the private sector.
3. The government then rolls out a massive new law and its regulatory children to "fix" the problem as they defined it.
4. The new law doesn't solve the real problem, costs a lot, and has massive unintended (but fully predicted) consequences, including setting the stage for the next crisis, which will be bigger and more damaging.
5. Memory of the past crisis fades and everybody reluctantly adjusts to the massive new regulatory overhead.
6. A new crisis occurs. The government publicly and violently searches for the culprits, aided by the MSM--looking exclusively in the business community...
and so it goes.
He's also conveniently forgetting the "Southern Strategy" (where the southern republicans suddenly decided to turn racist in order to court the southern white vote) while tossing the word "racist" and "democrat" around in conjunction with each other. Obvious agenda is obvious.
The last big food poisoning scare I recall hearing about was E. coli in tomatoes and lettuce that had been grown using untreated sewage. Spent brewery grains have nothing to do with that.
The last big meat-related food poisoning scare I recall hearing about was E. coli in processed chicken that had come from offal winding up in the machinery, and then in the meat. Spent brewery grains have nothing to do with that.
The last big meat-related scare I recall hearing about that wasn't E. coli was from BSE caused by cattle eating feed mixed with dead cattle. Spent brewery grains have nothing to do with that, at least directly.
So what would this proposed change in regulation possibly have to do with preventing food poisoning? I'm honestly at a loss for what problem this would fix.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Sometimes I think it has everything to do with how many times they inhale in an hour, and quite what they are inhaling. Some of their viewpoints just don't make sense otherwise.
:-P
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
I think this is bunk for a couple reasons. First, if you're a beer aficionado then a lot of the beer you drink probably comes from pretty small breweries, potentially small enough that they aren't big enough for it to be worth their time to setup arrangements with farmers to sell their waste products, so in that case it's not going to make a ton of difference.
Second, even if the above isn't true for you, there are plenty of very small breweries/brewpubs out there that definitely aren't doing anything like this. There are two in my town that brew something on the order of 50-100 barrels/year. They don't sell their waste products, they brew with quality ingredients and they have to pay rent, salaries, etc and they still manage to serve excellent beer for $5-6/glass (that's retail, consume on premise pricing) which I think is totally reasonable. If the little guy can do it then the big guys certainly can too.
Maybe it's a good thing though, perhaps it'll turn a few more people on to homebrewing which is really simple and very cost effective assuming you drink a good amount of beer.