Comments at the Opening of the Fermentation
Process Symposium
Harold C. Feightner
Executive Director, Indiana Brewers Association
Indianapolis, Indiana
From the standpoint of the alcoholic beverage industry this conference is vitally important because it marks its addition to the ranks
of the conservationists, its cooperation with the educators, and its recognition as an important economic factor.
The contribution of industrial representatives to this meeting, based
upon countless experiments, indicates an awareness on their part that
they have a scientific as well as a social obligation to perform. Your
presence here denotes a determination not to remain on the defensive in
the face of emotional attacks, but rather to take your rightful place
among those who would make this a better world in which to live.
Without presuming overmuch to venture into a technical field which
is somewhat foreign to one of my training, it strikes me that in the
brewery and distillery by-product utilization programs we have perhaps
inadvertently overlooked some important factors. May I ask, therefore,
why do brewers and distillers speak of "spent grains" when it is an
already established fact that grains used in the brewing and distilling
process are returned to the farms greatly enriched in nutritive value?
Why not call them "enriched grains"? Why speak of distillery "slops"?
Neither the word "spent" nor the word "slop" add dignity to an industry
that must nurture its public relations.
The brewers of Indiana organized into the Indiana Brewers Association have long recognized that the time was approaching when a
scientifically-minded populace would demand unpolluted streams, that
the laws of economics would require the utilization of by-products, or
waste products, and that industrial cooperation with educational institutions eventually would find answers to perplexing problems. The brewing industry, it can be said with pride, had solved the utilization of
enriched grains by returning them to the stock feed and dairy yards.
It has made notable progress in turning surplus yeast into food and
medical supplements, and now the Indiana brewers in connection with
Purdue University are attempting by scientific research to utilize the
-   109