What’s the most expensive ingredient in beer? Taxes! (VIDEO)

Taxes are already “the most expensive ingredient in beer today.”

 

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The Food and Drug Administration loves banning things more than you love beer.

The FDA is looking to clamp down on beer brewers with a proposal that would hold breweries to record keeping and food safety standards similar to those of livestock and pet food manufacturers.

Specifically, the FDA is concerned about the fact that many brewers sell their leftover grain as animal feed instead of throwing it in the trash. Brewing businesses are objecting to the proposal, saying that it will force them to throw away huge quantities of barley, wheat and other grains instead of putting it to good use by feeding it to livestock.

The FDA’s proposal would both harm the income of brewers and raise the price of livestock feed.

“This regulation is onerous and expensive, but really it’s just unnecessary. There has never been a single reported negative incidence with spent grain,” says Chris Thorne of the Beer Institute. The institute works to combat regulations that are unfavorable to brewers.

The government is already a significant burden on the beer industry. The institute says that, on average, taxes make up more than 40% of what American beer drinkers pay for beer. These range from “excise to consumption to sales taxes, as well as the normal business taxes. That makes taxes the most expensive ingredient in beer today.”



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