For two decades, Lugene Sas has driven a blue, rusty, worn-out truck twice a day, virtually every day, from his Northern Colorado dairy to Odell Brewing Company, a few miles to the south in Fort Collins. Lugene enjoys craft beer every bit as much as the thirsty masses who sun themselves on Odell Brewing’s expansive patio in summertime, but his twice-a-day habit rarely involves sample trays and seasonal releases.
Lugene is just one of the many farmers nationwide who relieve breweries of spent grain and repurpose it as high-quality livestock feed. Happy hogs, hens, and heifers from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine, relish about three million pounds of it annually.
Although the brewing process extracts most of malt’s carbohydrates for fermentation, spent grain still contains plenty of protein, fiber, fat, and other nutrients. At Lugene’s Taft Hill Dairy, about forty Guernsey, Holstein, Jersey, and Brown Swiss cows eagerly devour what the brewer would otherwise discard.
But all that could change if a proposed new rule by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is allowed to go into effect.
The rule, known as the—take a deep breath—Current Good Manufacturing Practice and Hazard Analysis and Risk-Based Preventive Controls for Food for Animals, would require that breweries essentially become certified animal feed production facilities.
No longer would brewers be allowed to sell—or even donate—spent grain as they currently do. Instead, they would have to dry, analyze, and package it all as commercial feed manufacturers. And the rules stipulate that it would all have to be done mechanically, without any human contact.
Furthermore, breweries would need to maintain complicated written records and plans that document everything from hazard analysis and monitoring schemes to corrective procedures and verification plans.
And lest you think this is simply one of those cases in which an otherwise well-intentioned law spurs some unintended consequences, breweries are specifically identified in the proposed rule:
"FDA understands that many breweries and distilleries sell spent grains, such as brewers dried grains and distillers dried 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.
Mr. Sas notes that he’s never had a single problem with the spent grain he takes off Odell’s hands and that it is, in fact, a very high quality feed for his “girls,” as he affectionately calls them. And he appreciates that it arrives at his farm fully hydrated, which saves him time, money, and water. The new rules would require that brewers dehydrate the grain before passing it on to the farmer, who would, in turn, rehydrate it.
Brendan McGivney, head of production for Odell Brewing Company, says that compliance with the proposed rules would require tremendous amounts of energy, both for dehydration and for the fuel required to move thousands of pounds of grain between the brewhouse and the grain processing facility. Many brewers simply can't afford the required investment and may have little choice but to send spent grain to landfills.
Aaron Rice of Jodar Farms, also in Fort Collins, feeds chickens and hogs the collective spent grain from several local breweries, including Equinox Brewing, Funkwerks, and Horse & Dragon Brewing Company. He even takes the grain from New Belgium’s pilot system. All of the grain he receives is “top notch,” and he is confused as to why these regulations have been proposed in the first place. “We've never been concerned with bacterial growth,” he says. “And we compost anything that isn't consumed within a day or two.”
Sas, McGivney, and Jodar agree that the proposed rules amount to little more than additional bureaucracy aimed at a problem that doesn't exist. And all three are concerned that if the regulations are approved, the way they do business will fundamentally change. The current arrangement saves brewers and farmers tremendous amounts of money. If it changes, the consumer will almost certainly notice at the cash register.
The farm-brewery connection is one that dates to the earliest days of brewing itself. Indeed, good beer isn't possible without good farms. But if the FDA has its way, brewers face a difficult choice between maintaining an established relationship with the local farmer and developing a new relationship with the local landfill.
What do you think? Does the proposed rule address legitimate concerns related to health and safety? Or does it just create more bureaucratic hoops for brewers to jump through?
If you'd like to weigh in on this issue, the FDA is accepting public comments through the end of the day on Monday, March 31, 2014. Visit the following link to make your voice heard.
http://www.regulations.gov/#!submitComment;D=FDA-2011-N-0922-0019
Photos by Emily Ryan