FDA May Break Ties Between Brewers And Farmers

by NickMacrea BDN- BANGOR, Maine — America’s booming brewing industry and farmers alike are bothered by a proposed U.S. Food and Drug Administration rule change that could alter a partnership that dates back to Neolithic times.
 In Maine and across the country brewers and farmers have formed handshake agreements: Brewers brew beer, producing barrels or truckloads full of heavy, wet spent grains. These grains have been heated up to extract sugars, proteins and other nutrients that go on to make beer. The process is called mashing. The spent grains are a byproduct — with no real usefulness purpose left for the brewer.
 To the farmer, spent grains are a valuable dietary supplement for their livestock. It’s common for breweries to reach out to local farms to offer up their spent grains as animal feed. Most often, farmers are happy to oblige, picking up the spent grains themselves a few times per week. Little or no money exchanges hands during these deals. Brewers are glad to get rid of the grain, and farmers are glad to take it off their hands.
 Andrew Geaghan of Geaghan Brothers Brewing Co. in Bangor, a company that brewed more than 15,000 gallons of beer in 2013, said each batch of beer uses about 350-500 pounds of grain per batch. At the end of the mashing process, it comes out even heavier because it’s saturated with water.
 Geaghan’s formed a partnership with Fair View Farm in Hampden.
 “It’s a really favorable relationship for both of us,” Geaghan said. “It’s a product that we extract what we can from it, and it leaves a nice feed for his cattle that is locally sourced and a high-protein, good fiber source, [and] a nice hydration source as well. It’s really a win-win for everybody.”
 Those sorts of partnerships have existed for as long as agriculture has existed, but the FDA’s rule proposal could change that.
 The proposed rule is aimed at “ensuring the safety of animal food for animals consuming the food and ensuring the safety of animal food for humans handling the food, particularly pet food,” according to the FDA.
 It requires facilities producing animal food to have written plans that identify hazards, specify steps to minimize those hazards, and monitor and record the safety of the feed.
 “FDA understands that many breweries and distilleries sell spent grains … as animal food. Because those spent grains are not alcoholic beverages themselves, and they are not in a prepackaged form that prevents any direct human contact with the food, the Agency tentatively concludes that subpart C of this proposed rule would apply to them,” according to the FDA rule.
 Most small and medium-sized brewers wouldn’t be able to follow these rules without significant investment. Breweries that want to send their spent grains to farmers would have to dry, package and analyze the grains, all without it touching human hands. These efforts would cost brewers money, time and resources, making it too much of a hassle for some to continue partnerships with farmers, according to critics.   more...proposed-fda-rule