Comments on: So what is organic, you smug so-and-so’s? http://greengrog.com/so-what-is-organic-you-smug-so-and-sos/ sustainable, organic and other cleaner-conscience beer news Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:57:01 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.1 By: Chris O'Brien, BeerActivist http://greengrog.com/so-what-is-organic-you-smug-so-and-sos/#comment-2 Chris O'Brien, BeerActivist Fri, 05 Oct 2007 02:10:21 +0000 http://greengrog.com/?p=8#comment-2 Howdy, I'm love to see this new blog about my two favorite things: drinking beer and saving the world! The hops issue is complex and I'd like to share some additional information. You're mistaken about the rules being changed to allow 38 new ingredients that are non-organic. These ingredients were allowed to be non-organic before. So the new rule isn't allowing what was once organic to be non-organic. Non-organic hops, in particular, have always been allowed in beer labeled USDA organic. The rule change was a two fold deal. The main change was a positive one. It used to be that 5% of ingredients in products labeled USDA organic were allowed to be non-organic. That 5% exemption was recently removed. That's a good thing. At the same time, 38 ingredients were proposed to be exempted so that the removal of the 5% rule wouldn't totally kill a bunch of products that rely on a few non-organic ingredients. Beer was one of those products. Organic hops are, in fact, relatively hard to come by. I wrote a whole article about this in the current issue of American Brewer, which I'll post to my blog as soon as the issue hits the stands. My simplified view on this subject is that the brewers committed to organic need to band together and stimulate a domestic supply of organic hops so that over the next several years we have the supply needed to satisfy demand, and then hops should be removed from the exemption list. Yours in GreenGrog, Chris O'Brien, Beer Activist Howdy,

I’m love to see this new blog about my two favorite things: drinking beer and saving the world!

The hops issue is complex and I’d like to share some additional information. You’re mistaken about the rules being changed to allow 38 new ingredients that are non-organic. These ingredients were allowed to be non-organic before. So the new rule isn’t allowing what was once organic to be non-organic. Non-organic hops, in particular, have always been allowed in beer labeled USDA organic.

The rule change was a two fold deal. The main change was a positive one. It used to be that 5% of ingredients in products labeled USDA organic were allowed to be non-organic. That 5% exemption was recently removed. That’s a good thing. At the same time, 38 ingredients were proposed to be exempted so that the removal of the 5% rule wouldn’t totally kill a bunch of products that rely on a few non-organic ingredients. Beer was one of those products. Organic hops are, in fact, relatively hard to come by. I wrote a whole article about this in the current issue of American Brewer, which I’ll post to my blog as soon as the issue hits the stands.

My simplified view on this subject is that the brewers committed to organic need to band together and stimulate a domestic supply of organic hops so that over the next several years we have the supply needed to satisfy demand, and then hops should be removed from the exemption list.

Yours in GreenGrog,
Chris O’Brien, Beer Activist

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