If you’re a lover of the brewsky, then Denver is the city for you.
The Mile High city brews more beer than any other American city, and the state of Colorado boasts over 140 microbreweries. So it probably won’t surprise beer lovers here in the “Napa of beer” that many brewers are using their drinks as forces for environmental and economic good, donating their spent grains — barley, hops, wheat and other grains that have been soaked in water during the beer-brewing process — to farmers who can use them to feed their livestock, instead of throwing them away.
Oskar Blues, a Longmont-based brewery, runs the Hops and Heifers program. In a process it calls “Farm to Cup,” the brewery grows hops on its own farm, uses the hops for brewing, feeds its cattle with the spent grains, and then uses the meat from these cows in burgers sold at its restaurant.
But newly proposed FDA rules threaten to disrupt innovative recycling programs such as this, forcing microbreweries to send the spent grains to landfills or else engage in a costly process of drying out the grains and packaging them to prevent anyone from touching them before they reach the farmers. For many small brewers, the cost of this would be too great and they’d be forced to choose the landfill option.
According to John Fryar of the Longmont Times-Call, Paul Gatza, who directs the Boulder-based 20,000-member strong Brewers Association, spoke with FDA officials who say they’ll change the rule before issuing new draft of the regulations this summer. “The wording in the original proposed rules was pretty bad,” Gatza said. He estimates that the new rule would cost breweries $5 more per barrel to process the grains before donating or selling them to farmers, potentially putting many small brewers out of the recycling business. That would have been a shame, as a recent Brewers Association survey found that members reuse 90 percent of their spent grains.
FDA spokeswoman Juli Putnam told Fryar that they’ve gone back to the drawing board, rewriting some of the language in the regulation in a way that will hopefully allow this beer positivity cycle to continue. Now that’s good news worth lifting a beer over.
MORE: His Family Lost its Farm. Now He’s Making Sure No One Else in His Community Suffers the Same Fate.
Tag: FDA
Should You Plate Up Genetically-Modified Salmon?
It goes without saying that salmon is one of the most popular types of seafood. In fact, according to the National Fisheries Institute, it’s the third most-consumed variety with 2.02 pounds eaten by the average person each year. But does anyone actually want to eat the pink-fleshed fish when it’s been bioengineered to grow at twice the normal rate?
Biotech firm AquaBounty doesn’t find that growth rate unappetizing and even boasts about it on its own website. Their salmon, deemed by the Massachusetts-based company as the “future of salmon,” is actually a hybrid that’s also part trout and part tilapia. The “salmon” are raised in sterile, all-female populations so if one escapes, it can’t breed with other fish. But the scariest part? This Frankenfish is actually pending approval by the FDA. And if it’s approved, this seafood could end up on your plate. Worse yet, it might not even be labeled so you’ll have no idea you’re eating it.
While AquaBounty says their fish helps reduce labor and production costs and is safe for the environment, we’re assuming you also feel a little uneasy about this, too. (Watch the short video above to learn more about why you shouldn’t eat GMO — genetically modified organism — salmon and why it’s harmful to the planet.) According to environmental organization Friends of the Earth, nearly two million people, including scientists, politicians and consumers have pressed the FDA to oppose GMO salmon.
MORE: Why You Should Add ‘Trash Fish’ to Your Diet
But no matter what the FDA decides, more and more of America’s grocery stores are taking a stance against GMO seafood and removing it from their shelves, which means you might not even be able to buy it. The latest supermarkets to take a stand — Safeway and Kroger — are the country’s biggest grocery store chains to make a commitment to not to sell genetically engineered seafood. (In total, they have more than 9,000 stores nationwide.) About 60 other major food retailers such as Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, and even big-box stores like Target, have also joined the cause. Of course, you’ll notice other big grocery chains such as Costco, Walmart and Albertsons conspicuously missing from this list, so there’s still work to be done. But if the country’s two largest grocery stores can say no to GMO, hopefully the others won’t be too far behind.