Proposed federal regulations that threw a multimillion dollar scare into New Hampshire's growing brewing industry appear to be on the verge of being scuttled by the federal Food and Drug Administration.

Brewers get rid of grain left over in the brewing process by selling it or giving it to farmers with dairy cows and beef cattle. The FDA is proposing new food safety rules for animal grains and would have included the spent brewing grains in those rules.

Critics said the FDA was pushing the concept that "good enough for humans is not good enough for a cow" into federal regulations.

Bill Herlicka of White Birch Brewing Co., of Hooksett, president of the Granite State Brewers Association, said the proposal would put millions of dollars worth of grain out of the reach of farmers and resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars in added expense for brewers to get rid of the waste from the brewing process.

"This practice of donating spent brewers' grains has been going on for the past 20-plus years with no ill health effects reported by farmers or consumers," Herlicka said.

The result of the federal tinkering, brewers claimed, would have been higher costs for grain disposal, which would trickle down to consumer prices. A big casualty would be the foods which define casual American cuisine cheese, burgers, beer and ice-cream.

Bovine diets would suffer as well.

"The grains are malted and then boiled with water to draw off the sugar and that is what is fermented," said Chris Thorne, a vice president with the Beer Institute, an industry trade association. "The spent grain is a very nutritional and highly valued seed product ... the grains have all the fibers, essential oils and proteins that you want to feed to your animals."

The industry response has the feds waving a white flag.

Michael Taylor, the FDA's deputy commissioner for Foods and Veterinary Medicine, said the agency heard worried brewers from New Hampshire and elsewhere complain that the requirements would increase the cost of doing business but would not improve food safety.

Visit link:

Federal beer waste regulations could have cost NH brewers millions