No surprise that the Brewers Association and Beer Institute have come out so firmly against a proposal that would make it harder and more expensive for breweries to sell or give away their spent grains. (The BA’s statement is here.) If the Food and Drug Adminstration does not afford some sort of relief then it will end up costing brewers and/or beer drinkers (likely both).
That doesn’t mean the new rules are necessarily a bad idea. Nobody is saying that spent grain is bad for cattle. However, the FDA rules are are part of a broad modernization of the food safety system. “This proposed regulation would help prevent foodborne illness in both animals and people,” the agency said in the statement. So it seems like Colorado senator Mark Udall has the best idea: “That’s why I am urging the FDA to swiftly complete a risk assessment of brewers’ uses of spent grains as a cost-effective and safe livestock feed. When brewers succeed, so do countless other businesses and sectors of our economy.”
Reading about this reminded me of a bit of history that, because of space logistics, got cut out of “For the Love of Hops.” This comes from “Hops: Their Cultivation, Commerce, and Uses in Various Countries,” written by P.L. Simmonds in 1877:
“A farmer in the north of France, having been driven by the scarcity of fodder to try to make use of whatever fell in his way for feeding his cattle, prove that hop leaves were a valuable element of food for cows when mixed with other substances. He found that whenever he gave them hop leaves he always obtained more milk and his cows throve better than usual. The leaves must be used as soon as they are plucked, for the cows object to them when dried by the sun.”
Are there any studies indicating spent grains have been getting handled in a way that is less than sanitary? It is all very good to stand up and wave the flag but I’d be quite happy for the food system to be safe. It was quite fun to learn that cattle were eating food that included the remains of cattle there for a while.
Alan – Have you ever walked by a barrel full of spent grain outside a brewery? Your nose will tell you some sort of “risk assessment” might be proper.
My thought exactly. And also how many (i) supply as feed and (ii) make so much $ that they don’t get the 3 year implementation period under the exemption. I wonder if this is only a big craft matter that the vast majority of breweries get swept up into.
Decent background starting point here.
It seems sensible, but I do wonder what the real danger is. Stinky spent grain may be no more harmful than stinky cheese. So long as there’s a healthy way to do this, it’s a wonderfully elegant solution–especially when you consider how energy- and water-intensive it is to make beer.
Now, I do not believe you are advocating for grain bloat are you, Jeff?
Spent grains pretty much need to be included in your HACCP plan over here. Is that not the case in the US?
I have a goat dairy and feed my goats the spent grain I produce. I know of others that have deals with local microbreweries to take their spent grain. I have been connected with the Ag community research, issues and problems quite closely.
Dairy and cattle people handle their feeds carefully. A health problem is very difficult and expensive to deal with. Health issues which translate into problems with the milk produced can mean days or weeks of lost production, and not just from one animal, but from an entire herd.
Meat producers have the same issue in that processors finding a problem will reject an entire herd so that they don’t have to deal with segregation and special testing and inspections.
Add to this, that there have NO reported cases where the feeding of spent brewer’s grains have caused a problem.
While it sounds good on paper (everyone likes to jump on the food safety wagon), this is a case of the government solving a problem that does not exist.
The ones who lose out in the end are the small breweries and the small farmer. The ones who gain from this are the big breweries, who have contracts with large feed manufacturers to use their spent grains, and the large feed manufacturers, who lose out on sales to the small farmers who use spent grains direct from small brewing operations.
Thanks for the input, Cliff. I’ve talked to plenty of small brewers (that is brewers at small breweries) in the past 20+ years who traded their spent grain for a bit of meat (always a lopsided trade). They never worried about their health.
Yet some studies indicate increased risk: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2223201/#!po=39.4737
I’ve seen the article. The issue that I have is that it traces “dried distillers grains” to the increased number of eColi O157, which is exactly what the FDA is proposing is the proper handling of spent grains from the brewer to the farmer/consumer. A similar correlation occurs when farmers fed barley silage versus a soy meal based diet. The silage acts as the inoculating agent and the barley is a good growth media for the various forms of bacteria present in silage. Separate the two and ????
I noticed that, too, about the dried grain. The commodity meat market is full of these sorts of questions with e.coli rearing up its head. And not just meat but cheese. The immediate corporate response from BA HQ that this is all simple minded fearmongering is odd. Big corporate meat as the partner of craft beer makes me wonder what the point of it all is. Looks like money.