Beer Price Crisis On the Horizon 397
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.""
So - who's in love with the government again? (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.
Re:So - who's in love with the government again? (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... [mossmotors.com]
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.
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I think you overstate the inefficiency of ethanol as a fuel...though perhaps you need to tune your engine differently to take advantage of it.
OTOH, it is a remarkably poor fuel when one considers the costs of originally producing it. Sugar cane is much more plausible, but doesn't grow in the same areas. The best argument for corn derived ethanol fuel that I can see is that any corn used as fuel won't be turned into fructose syrup. AFAIKT, this is basically a government subsidy to the large growers. A ve
Re:So - who's in love with the government again? (Score:5, 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.
you missed the point (Score:3)
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%
Re:So - who's in love with the government again? (Score:5, 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.
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Great so they make a rule to ban a 100 year old practice, based on no evidence that it is unsafe--gee after 100 years. Then take comments to adjust the rule great.
Re:So - who's in love with the government again? (Score:5, 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.
Re:So - who's in love with the government again? (Score:5, Informative)
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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.
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The problem with Political Correctness (Score:2)
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.
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Data? Facts? What is your analysis of the feed proposals?
Oh. you're just another Right wing Anti-science nut.
OK. next?
Re:So - who's in love with the government again? (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.
Re:So - who's in love with the government again? (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.
Re:So - who's in love with the government again? (Score:5, 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.
Re:So - who's in love with the government again? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So - who's in love with the government again? (Score:5, 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..
Re:So - who's in love with the government again? (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.
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How about composting it, then? Just a thought, and it may well not be profitable. However, living in the city I have often had the opportunity to observe how, on one hand, there's a lot people with small gardens, who spend small fortunes on expensive soil mixtures - basically peat or compost - while on the other hand, just a few miles away there are livery stables that actually pay farmers to come and take away horse manure, which would have been an excellent basis for production of compost. I can't quite u
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Re:So - who's in love with the government again? (Score:4, 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.
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TFA also mentions that the price of dairy products would rise due to the farmers having to pay more for feed.
Yup. That's why I said the price of feed would go up.
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First, if you can't trust the byproducts from breweries to be safe, you've got a bigger problem: the beer would be poisonous.
Second, it's unlikely to cause problems that can bioaccumulate in livestock; if it goes bad, the livestock get sick, at which point the milk and meat cannot be used without treating them.
But what would I know? I only have a BS in agriculture.
Re:So - who's in love with the government again? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So - who's in love with the government again? (Score:5, Informative)
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RTFA, used momensin antibiotic on the foam to deflate it. Moreover, foam does not occur from distillers grain only, there's an unknown trigger agent at work.
Re:So - who's in love with the government again? (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."
Re:So - who's in love with the government again? (Score:5, 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."
Re:So - who's in love with the government again? (Score:4, 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.
So I was all "Social contract, move to Somalia"... (Score:2)
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.)
Re:So I was all "Social contract, move to Somalia" (Score:5, 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.
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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.
Re:So - who's in love with the government again? (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.
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.
Re:So - who's in love with the government again? (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... [fda.gov]
Re:So - who's in love with the government again? (Score:4, 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... [fda.gov]
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.
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You might want to add, "I am not an economist but..." before you write these things. "which may mean lower profits, leading to reduced employment" is as ridiculous as saying that adding a powered usb port will draw less power from your CPU and speed computation.
We have no idea what this will do for employment, there's simply too much going on. Increasing beer prices ever so slightly (I doubt this adds more than a cent or two per can, but whatever) would decrease beer consumption (also ever so slightly) and
Re:So - who's in love with the government again? (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.
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Sadly, the FDA has such a shoestring budget that they are more often reactionary than anything.
Reactionary is good behavior for the role that the FDA has. Now, if we could only get them to do risk management too.
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Grain products cannot carry mad cow. That comes from feeding beef byproducts to cows. You won't find e-coli there either, if there had been any, it would be killed in the process of making the wort.
As for the fungal issue, that actually was a problem and it killed hundreds, you apparently know about it, yet you deny it was an issue?!?
So perhaps they should focus on something that is PROVEN to be a problem rather than something that has never been over several decades. They were free to inspect the compoundi
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When you can show me how a few tons ton of contaminated grain not destined for human consumption can damage a large area of the U.S. beyond repair, I will reconsider.
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I am in favor of sensible regulation. This one isn't sensible, so I oppose it.
It's amazing though. Express any support for any sort of law or regulation, even the law against murder and suddenly some think you want to decide how many times they can inhale in an hour. I have no idea why.
Re:So - who's in love with the government again? (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.
Re:So - who's in love with the government again? (Score:4, 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.
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They didn't have the science to know it was asbestos causing health problems 4400 years ago. We have the science now. We figured out that it was a bad thing. Using modern science, we would know if feeding beer waste to cattle is bad. Perhaps in a thousand years to they might have new science that shows eat steaks from beer waste fed cattle increases the likelihood of cancer by .00001%.
and we did, 1,800 years before widespread use (Score:5, 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.
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Because they themselves admitted they have no reason to believe this is actually harmful at the moment. They're preemptively banning things, which should be considered unacceptable in any truly free country.
They are proposing that an exception is revoked, so that all components of the industrialized food chain can be traced. Whether, this particular decision in that matter is of significance, is hard to say...
:)
Either way, head lines such as "Beer prices could go up" is not the way to debate this
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Re:So - who's in love with the government again? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Funny thing. I am very much to the left of where we are today, but I oppose the FDA implementing this proposal. The FDA in general needs to be curbed. They have made a pattern of expanding regulation without showing cause while at the same time neglecting and failing at their core mission.
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I don't see Democrats rushing out to stop H1B's. In fact Obam and Clonton have both pushed for more Visas.
Don't worry Americans... (Score:4, 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).
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*contemplatively sips Guinness*
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I'm told that it is not nearly as lame on the other side of the Atlantic, but I have my doubts.
It is one of the most amazing looking beers out there, and yet tastes alarmingly close to water. So sad.
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Thick and rich as soup in a pub on the shores of Galway bay my friend, the only way Guinness was ever meant to be served. I wouldn't touch the tinned stuff with someone else's.
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Re:Don't worry Americans... (Score:5, Interesting)
Guess you have not been to Canada in the past 20 years.
Swans [swanshotel.com]
Spinnakers [spinnakers.com]
Canoe Club [canoebrewpub.com]
Philips Beer [phillipsbeer.com]
Vancouver Island Brewing [vanislandbrewery.com]
Moon Under Water [moonunderwater.ca]
Lighthouse Brewing [lighthousebrewing.com]
Hoyne Brewing [hoynebrewing.ca]
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.
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Quite true, my city(funny how in Canada we call a city with ~35k people a city), we have 2 micro breweries. They're not well known by any stretch of the imagination but they're known well enough that the people who run them make money to keep them in operation and run a "brew your own" business on the side.
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With the way you Canadians tax the fuck out of your alcohol? It's no surprise that many of you end up brewing your own batch. Now, I don't care how you guys handle your taxes, that is your business and none of mine, but I really don't think you could end up selling much down here with those prices.
Funny enough, that's because in places like Ontario the booze is controlled by a provincially mandated cartel. In Ontario's case beer is "run" by Brewers Retail AKA the beer companies themselves, and the LCBO(the provincial government). And sadly in Ontario's case, it isn't the tax that you're getting screwed over on, you're paying a indulgence tax. And instead of leveraging their buying power, everyone gets screwed over. There's actually a rather massive dustup right now over selling booze at corner
Milk/Beef prices as well? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wouldn't eliminating a source of cheap feed also increase milk and beef prices?
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says so in the article, but haha who would read that, its slashdot
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I don't make the rules.
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Maybe the /. community doesn't give a fuck about those.
Oh well, maybe beef.
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Quite so, and they mention just that in the article.
Of course! (Score:2)
Better living through regulation strikes again. It is part of a well oiled machine.
Obama: My Plan Makes Electricity Rates Skyrocket [youtube.com]
Bullshit (Score:5, 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.
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Brewers get $30 a ton for the waste from beer manufacturing. Per can/bottle of beer, that's negligible.
You're the one that's full of shit. From the article:
The equipment and set up to do that would cost about $13 million per facility
Why don't you tell us how that $13,000,000 cost per brewing facility will be paid off by that $30/ton "profit" and thus be a negligible cost.
Also, what of the costs to your beef, which will also go up due to the loss or increased cost of feed?
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Because the brewers will just dump it. They'll lose $30/ton + about $15 per ton to dump it at the local landfill unless they find another buyer. 1 ton of grain probably makes over a thousand gallons of beer. So $45/1000 = .0045 or 5 cents per gallon of beer. This is not even taking into account that the landfills probably closer and they don't find another buyer.
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Why don't you tell us how that $13,000,000 cost per brewing facility will be paid off by that $30/ton "profit" and thus be a negligible cost.
It won't be. That's the point.
Brewers are either giving this stuff away for free or making as little as $30/ton so that they don't have to deal with it. They simply won't spend the $13M, since they have no reason to do so, and will instead landfill all of this stuff for cheap. Thus, this whole "beer price crisis" is a fictional event that will never occur.
If that equipment is going to be purchased, it will be purchased for the beer industry by the livestock industry, since they are the ones who stand to los
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You're missing the point. The point is, right now they make a relatively small amount of money by selling off what would otherwise be waste. The regulation doesn't force them to do anything unless they're selling that "waste" as animal feed. If the testing and equipment make it unprofitable, they can simply dispose of the waste, losing an income of $30/ton. Relative to their profits from their actual core business, that's negligible. Beer will not suddenly double in price - beer is roughly $1000/ton (based
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The maximum possible rational impact would be $30/ton, because if the cost of processing were more than the cost of selling the material, they would stop selling it, which would cost them $30/ton. So it's impossible for the impact of this on a bottle of beer to be more than $30/the number of bottles produced making a ton of this feed.
If it cost $13M to outfit a facility with processing equipment, they would only spend that money if selling the feed were profitable after the cost, in which case the "cost" wo
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The article is sensationalism. You don't have to install at each brewery. Someone builds one processor, and inserts it between the many breweries and the many farms.
So now you want the breweries to pay to have it sent to a processor, and have the cost go up dramatically, even though this stuff is food which was approved for human consumption and it's been boiled, so there's just no reason for that to happen. The breweries can legally make it into bread on the premises and sell it to humans but you don't want it to be fed to animals.
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, 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 [snackworks.ca]
I am not against regulations as I see them as protection but bad regulation is just stupid.
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Brewers get $30 a ton for the waste from beer manufacturing. Per can/bottle of beer, that's negligible.
While that may be true, the cost would inevitably be higher that merely profits lost -- even assuming they don't pay for expensive processing equipment to turn it into feed. If they weren't able to even give it away as feed, they'd probably have to pay to dispose of it in landfills or something, which would add further costs. Presumably some farmers who want to use the stuff and essentially get it for free maybe even pay for transport costs and so forth, which would now be on the brewers to pay to get it
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The "craft brewers" don't produce that much waste,
According to this article;
Craft brewers sold an estimated 15.6 million barrels* of beer in 2013,
A barrel is 31 gallons and a gallon of beer produces about a poind of spent grain. Here is the math. 15.6M * 31 = 241,800 tons of spent grain that could be used for animal feed rather than being wasted in a landfill. To me, 242 thousand tons is significant.
and it's biodegradable.
So is paper yet we recycle paper. This material will take up room in landfills. In a time where we are running out of landfills not using that much feed is stupid.
Interstate Commerce Clause (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, so tell me where in the Constitution I should look for Federal power to regulate beer that doesn't cross state lines.
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Look in the same place you would find federal power to regulate weed.
Re:Interstate Commerce Clause (Score:4, Informative)
Weed that doesn't cross state lines you mean.
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This is a story about regulating animal feed and not beer.
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Very well -- so where is their authority to regulate animal feed that doesn't cross state lines?
If all it takes to avoid the expensive retooling is restricting the sale of the animal feed to within the State of origin, it seems that would provide an option a lot of these brewers would choose.
Somehow I suspect that the Feds don't _really_ care about the Constitution. Moreover, I suspect that puts me on their "watch" list.
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Re:Interstate Commerce Clause (Score:4, 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.
Follow the money (Score:5, 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.
As described, this seems rather random (Score:3)
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.)
What can you do? (Score:2)
What about the animals? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Finally someone with a reasonable explanation.
Feeding cows vegemite _is_ cruel and should be banned.
Have anyone run a bussiness? (Score:2)
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
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You are making way too much sense. Are you lost?
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I once worked at a place where we produced a lot of waste contaminated lubricant. We securely set this barrels, and a nice guy would come by and pump it out and reprocess it and sell for whatever it could be used for.
Ron Jeremy?
Beef already high and dairy is climbing (Score:3)
Recent CNN report on the prices of beef and dairy: http://money.cnn.com/2014/04/1... [cnn.com]
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).
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So, not feeding the beer by-products to cows will acidify the oceans???
Who knew?
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How does recycling beer-brewing waste as a cheap, nutritious animal feed instead of burying it in a landfill contribute to ocean acidification?
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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.
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It describes that it is a preventative measure for food poisoning, not so much how.
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