Yes, if you ever wondered why you often see cows passed out under trees when you drive down the highway, here’s your answer.  Some of them have been chowing down on waste yeast, which is sold to farmers as cow feed.  With an alcohol content of up to 8%, that’s quite a kick!

Let’s amble under the fold and see how green beer-making is going to put an end to this bovine drunkenness - and perhaps even save the planet as well.

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This week, Oregon’s Full Sail Brewing Company received the Governor’s Sustainability Award for small business in recognition of the company’s ever increasing commitment to the community and the environment.

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While recording interviews for our Greening the Golden Years podcast series, I received an email from a senior, Mr. John Lane, who’s become very interested in a group called “PETH,” but he failed to say what it was all about. So, being the curious one, I called him and had the most “interesting” conversation. Look out, PETA — here comes the People for the Ethical Treatment of Hops.

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Enjoy the day, and, have one for the hops.

The USDA, which certifies organic products, announced a controversial proposal in May which would allow "38 new non-organic ingredients in products bearing the 'USDA Organic' seal. Most of the ingredients are food colorings derived from plants that are supposedly not 'commercially available' in organic form." However, included among these is hops, a critical ingredient in beer. The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) has raised issue with this "Budweiser exception" and with only a 7 day public comment period, it seemed our organic beer would become not. However, within that short period and with no formal announcement consumers united and filed 1,264 comments.

From the Beer Activist, the rationale of the exception being made is that these 38 ingredients are 1) "minor" ingredients in their products, and 2) not commercially available in organic form.

1. Hops are not essential to the character of beer? Before I even knew what a hop was I knew it was what made beer beer. Not to mention beer cannot be legally labeled as such without hops.

2. Organic hops have been available commercially through such companies as Seven Bridges Cooperative for quite some time. And in a beautifully quick response to demand just a couple weeks ago, Anheuser-Busch began "brewing our nationally available organic beers with 100-percent organic hops." Why? Because the USDA was stalled, and 100% organic was required before this proposal. Rather than be forced to pull their line of beer A-B suddenly sourced the hops they had previously claimed did not exist. A great push forward for organic hops farmers which is now threatened by this new proposal.

The OCA announced last week that the USDA has extended the comment period by two months, which means there is time to act! In order to preserve the integrity of organic certification, follow these steps and make the USDA remove hops from the list of ingredients:

ACTION STEPS:

1. Click here to file your opposition via the Organic Consumers Association website.
2. To read all 1,264 comments submitted during the original seven day comment period, go to www.regulations.gov, scroll down and click on "Advanced Search." In the "Agency" pulldown menu, select "Agricultural Marketing Services." Skip all the rest of the fields until the bottom, where you need to type "ams-tm-07-0062″ in the "Keyword" box and select "any word". Then hit "submit." It'll only give you 14 results, but if you click on the hyperlinked "document ID" "ams-tm-07-0062″ you'll get all 1,264 comments.
3. Grab a glass of your favorite organic brew and raise a toast to its continued organic status!