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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.""

38 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 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
    3. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by rolfwind · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Reading this on ethanol made me lose any hope in the government being anything but Oligarchy run:
      http://www.mossmotors.com/Site...

      AFAIK, putting 10% ethanol in gas drops the mpg of cars more than 10%. At least according to a Consumer Reports article I read years ago and they went by rule experience. Basically it means that if they took all the ethanol out of the gas, and gave you 0.9 gallons pure gas instead of 1 gallon adulterated, you as a driver would be better off.

      So the entire industry is completely taxpayer supported bullshit. We're carrying an industry that has no use. And this in an era where water table is decreasing (corn is unbelievably thirsty), food prices and meat rising astronomically, etc.

      I have friends in the corn states. The corn farmers (and usually farm corps) are well off... at the expense of everyone else.

      And there are hundreds of other examples like that. For every 1 good thing the government does, it seems there are 4-5 examples of overreach which costs everyone and only benefits a small segment.

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

      I like my government to help make sure things are safe for eating and drinking.

      And I especially like when the government responds to criticisms by saying they didn't understand this issue when they made their rules and will take comments from the industry and revise their proposed rules as they have done in this case.

      I know it is not as fun for the anti-government types, but even the linked to article mentions it at the very bottom of the story:

      The FDA will open up the rule to comments again this summer and then revise the proposal, which is due to be finalized by August, 2015.

      So this is already a non issue, they have agreed to revise the rules so there are not the dire consequences the article was using to stir everyone up.

      --
      Wax on, wax off baby!
    5. 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.
    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 ThePhilips · · Score: 4, Informative

      OMFG. You frigging yankees can't even RTFA.

      "OMG! ZOMG! gov't taking our freedoms!!! this must stop now!!!!!"

      Let me help those of you who are not yet blind with rage, by quoting the RTFA:

      The spent grain is hauled to dairy farms in the area, giving local cows a high-protein, high-fiber feed.

      The proposal would classify companies that distribute spent grain to farms as animal feed manufacturers, possibly forcing them to dry and package the material before distribution.

      It's not targeted on breweries specifically. It is targeted at diary farms. It is about accountability what the cows are fed with. Breweries inserted themselves into the market and, as suppliers, are subject to regulations.

      --
      All hope abandon ye who enter here.
    9. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by mspohr · · Score: 4, Informative

      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 don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
    10. 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.

    11. 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.

    12. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by Ichijo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I would much rather have a bad law that requires an effort to keep in place than a bad law that requires an effort to repeal.

      --
      Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
    13. 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.
    14. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by sjames · · Score: 5, Informative

      What contamination? The grain is heated to 170F long enough to kill anything harmful in it. There has never been a case of this causing a single problem anywhere. Even the FDA admits it doesn't know of any incident that would have been prevented by this proposal. It's like mandatory testing for antimatter contamination in coffee. It never happens.

      Perhaps the FDA should focus it's resources on things that have been a problem like fungal contamination in drugs.

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

      Complete clickbait.

      If timothy had actually RTFA that he cited then he would see that this won't affect the price of beer much at all:

      Many brewers give the grain away to get rid of it while others sell it to brokers at a low price. Widmer, for example, sells it for $30 a ton. “This is not a large revenue stream for us,” Mennen said.

      That works out to losing $30 in revenue per 2000 gallons of beer. It would, however, increase the price farmers pay for feed.

    16. 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.

    17. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by pepty · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yup. According to the article, brewers would lose up to one cent in revenue per sixpack ($30 per ton of spent grain) if this rule went through.

    18. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 3, Interesting

      On top of that, they're taking comments until 2015 and didn't even realise this would be such a big deal, so in all likelihood the exemption will get preserved. (Particularly since congresspeople are now speaking out about it.) It's practically accidental.

      --
      Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
    19. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by clay_buster · · Score: 3, Informative
      This is probably the best recycled feed the dairy farmers get. The government is going to regulate something with no history of problems while letting cows continuous antibiotics and while letting the grain companies coat seed in known biological disrupt-ers. I'd said they are focused on the easy problem while letting the bug companies skate.

      The proposal would classify companies that distribute spent grain to farms as animal feed manufacturers, possibly forcing them to dry and package the material before distribution.

      It's not targeted on breweries specifically. It is targeted at diary farms. It is about accountability what the cows are fed with. Breweries inserted themselves into the market and, as suppliers, are subject to regulations.

    20. 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
    21. 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.

    22. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by spune · · Score: 4, Informative

      since brewing waste was added to pig feed a few years ago, an unprecedented problem has emerged at hog farms around the country -- explosive manure foam. several barns have exploded, in one instance killing hundreds of pigs. more commonly, the noxious foam seeps up from the shitheap underneath the barn, through the slats in the floor, and into the pens. this widespread, extant problem is being addressed by these new regulations.

    23. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by spune · · Score: 4, Informative

      link to click http://www.motherjones.com/tom...

    24. Re:So - who's in love with the government again? by InvalidError · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If you live in an area of where temperatures drop a fair bit below freezing for a fair chunk of the year, you would end up adding ethanol as a fuel anti-freeze. It is also a weak solvent for compounds that are not soluble in gasoline, absorbs moisture, reduces the likelihood of engine knocking and a handful of other benefits.

      Ethanol does have lower energy density than gasoline but it has enough benefits for some amount of it still being generally desirable - if you removed all ethanol from gasoline, gas companies would likely replace it with a more complex additive cocktail that might not perform quite as good.

    25. 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. Don't worry Americans... by Mashiki · · Score: 3, Informative

    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...
    1. Re:Don't worry Americans... by jklovanc · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Guess you have not been to Canada in the past 20 years.
      Swans
      Spinnakers
      Canoe Club
      Philips Beer
      Vancouver Island Brewing
      Moon Under Water
      Lighthouse Brewing
      Hoyne Brewing
      That is just in Victoria BC a small city of 300k. There are many more across Canada. By the way the craft brewing trend started in Canada and spread to the US. American craft beers have improved over the last ten years as have Canadian craft beers. Lets not get into a pissing match. That could be a long battle with all the beer involved.

  3. Milk/Beef prices as well? by lagomorpha2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

  4. 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 jklovanc · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Brewers get $30 a ton for the waste from beer manufacturing.

      The lost revenue is not the issue. The breweries could just put it in a landfill and the beer prices would hardly be effected. The costs would come in the equipment and manpower needed to comply with the new regulations. Letting perfectly good animal feed go to waste because a bad regulation is prohibiting the sale is a bad idea.

      They just have to follow the same rules as everybody else who sells animal feed, like Purina Chows and Cargill.

      Every farmer who sells hay does not have to package that hay in closed sanitized containers. There are different regulations for different kinds of feed. Another issue is that the transport is very different. Most large feed manufacturers have large plants that ship feed over a wide area. This feed can sit around for weeks or months before it is used. In that time there is a very good probability that any small contamination could grow into something serious. Spent grain is sanitized during manufacture, shipped extremely short distances and used within a few days of production. There is very little possibility of contamination in that time. Comparing spent grain from small breweries to Cargill is like comparing a weekend bake sale to Mr. Christie

      I am not against regulations as I see them as protection but bad regulation is just stupid.

  5. 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.
    1. Re:Interstate Commerce Clause by Baldrson · · Score: 3, Informative

      Weed that doesn't cross state lines you mean.

      --
      Seastead this.
    2. Re:Interstate Commerce Clause by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 3, Informative

      Wickard v. Filburn?

      That's the Supreme Court case that ruled that a farmer growing his own chickenfeed was engaged in Interstate Commerce, since the act of NOT BUYING chickenfeed affected interstate commerce in chickenfeed.

      Looks like it would pretty much cover this case nicely.

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
  6. Follow the money by chthon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  7. What about the animals? by dtjohnson · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  8. 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.

    --
    -- Will program for bandwidth
  9. and we did, 1,800 years before widespread use by raymorris · · Score: 4, Informative

    > 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.