Tag: AAIAC

Obtaining a COLA (Certificate of Label Approval) from the TTB can be a time-consuming process that’s difficult to sync with the rest of your operations. But here’s a little-known fact: if you are importing alcoholic beverages for use at a tradeshow, or to give out samples for soliciting orders, you may be eligible for a COLA waiver.

COLA waivers can be requested by submitting a formal letter to the TTB. The letter must guarantee that the products in question will meet these compliance requirements before reaching a U.S. port:
• The products will be imported by the holder of a Federal Importer’s Basic Permit (you also need to include the permit number)
• All applicable taxes and duties will be paid
• The imported products will have the following labels:
o Government Warning Statement (Code of Federal Regulations, Title 27, Subpart 16)
o Purpose label (e.g. “For Trade Show Purposes Only – Not for Sale”)
o A sulfites disclaimer for eligible wines (e.g. “CONTAINS SULFITES”)

The letter also has to provide information regarding the details of the products you need waivers for, including:
• The purpose for importing and for requesting a waiver (for tradeshows or other events, include dates and locations)
• The class, type, and quantity of each alcoholic beverage product
• The country of origin for each product
• The brand name of each product

The TTB accepts these waiver requests by both email and fax (202-453-2970). To make the process even faster and easier, I recommend using this official template provided by the TTB (this opens a MS Word file you can save and modify).

Alcoholic Beverages and FDA Jurisdiction

Even though the primary regulatory authority for the alcoholic beverages is the TTB, the FDA does have some power in the industry. Since many alcohol manufacturers aren’t sure when or where they may be subject to FDA regulations, I thought I’d shed some light on the agency.

Currently, the TTB and the FDA operate together under a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding, which basically outlines when, why, and how the TTB refers issues to the FDA. These issues are largely related to health and safety. For example, if you submit a formula to the TTB for a distilled spirit containing an unusual ingredient, the TTB will deny your application unless you can provide documentation certifying that the ingredient is Generally Regarded as Safe (GRAS) by the FDA for use in alcoholic beverages. You may recall the big industry upset circa 2010 when the FDA declared caffeine as an unsafe food additive for alcoholic beverages.

Beyond issuing certificates and declarations, there are circumstances where the FDA has more active authority. As part of the agency’s mission to promote food items that are properly labeled and safe for consumption, the FDA can take action in cases of adulterated or contaminated food products – including domestic and imported alcoholic beverages. Specifically, if alcoholic beverages have been reported as adulterated, the FDA has the power to seize those products, refuse their importation, and actively discourage their distribution through consumer markets. Generally, this happens when a manufacturer has been slow or ineffective at implementing a product recall.

In addition to formulation approvals, food safety compliance, and product recall procedures, alcohol manufacturers may also need to interact with the FDA on issues including:
• Registration of food facilities
• Labeling of wines and ciders containing less than 7% alcohol by volume
• Labeling of beers that do not contain barley or hops
• Facility inspections

If you have any questions about FDA jurisdiction in your business or other regulatory compliance issues, I’d be happy to help.

Like any manufacturing process, the production of alcoholic beverages creates byproducts. After mashing, grains are lautered to separate the wort from residual grain. While the wort continues on in the production of the spirit, the leftover spent grains have no further use. But rather than throw them away, brewers commonly sell or donate the spent grain to farmers who use it as fertilizer or livestock feed.

Spent Grain

This environmentally-friendly exchange has been a popular practice for centuries, and continues today. However, I still get lots of questions from newer breweries about spent grains, compliance issues, and oversight from the TTB or FDA. This confusion likely stems from the upheaval that the entire alcohol beverage industry went through during late-2013 early-2014 when the FDA proposed some new rules in an update to the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).

Essentially, the FDA proposed rules to better regulate the quality assurance of animal food by requiring “that certain facilities establish and implement hazard analysis and risk-based preventive controls for food for animals.” This would place an extremely expensive and cumbersome burden on breweries across the nation to bring their facilities, processes, and staff all up to code.

To make a long story short: all the trade associations and congress members backed by breweries, wineries, and distilleries spoke out against the proposal, the FDA back-pedaled and added an exemption to section 116 of the FSMA for alcohol-related facilities, and the producers and consumers of spent grains all lived happily ever after. Coincidentally, the latest iteration of the FSMA has compliance deadlines starting this month – but it’s nothing that the manufacturers of fine spirits need to worry about any more.

I’d toast to that.

In an interesting combination of alcoholic beverage law and IP law, two breweries in the state of Florida recently butted heads over a trademark dispute. It started when Due South Brewing of Boynton Beach – which has a flagship series of IPAs which range from Category 3-5 – sent a cease and desist letter to Big Storm Brewing claiming that the Tampa-based brewery’s “Hurricane Series” of Belgian-style beers, labeled Categories 1-5, violated Due South’s common law trademark rights to the terms “Category 3” and “Category 4.”

While all beer labels must pass through the TTB before hitting the market, the TTB only makes sure that labels meet the compliance requirements on their checklist. They’re not checking for trademark infringement, so this type of dispute is not unheard of in the alcoholic beverage industry. It sounds like Due South is making a mountain out of a molehill, since a generic-sounding trademark on a completely different style of beer could have a tough time in court against fair-use arguments. But, there is a legal basis for their claim.

Firstly, Due South’s “Category” series is one of its most popular lines. The “Category” trademark is very valuable to them, so it’s in their best interest to take potential infringements seriously. If they don’t, it potentially becomes much easier in future disputes for imitators to argue that their use of the trademark is legitimate.

Fun fact: Due South’s Category 5 IPA placed in multiple categories of the Best Florida Beer Championships of 2014 and 2015. If the brewery’s trademark hadn’t expired last April, they surely would have included it in their claim.

Secondly, a trademark infringement claim must prove that the other party’s use of the trademark is likely to confuse consumers. In their cease and desist letter, Due South claims that they received more than 30 reports of “actual consumer confusion and/or diminution of consumer goodwill” in less than a week.

Fortunately for them, Big Storm made the smartest decision in this scenario: they consulted with a law firm. In a dense, six page response, they laid defensive groundwork citing fair-use, questioning the strength of the trademark, and denying the likelihood of consumer confusion. The legal exchange between the law firms representing the breweries can be read here.

In response, Due South appears to have dropped the issue for now to avoid potentially drawn out litigation. Overall, this serves as an excellent lesson for breweries and the benefits of retaining legal counsel.

With a presidential election upcoming, you can expect tax policies to be subject to heightened scrutiny. Proposing a tax increase of any kind is usually bad for any delegate’s political career – most of the time. Specifically, I’m talking about the so-called “sin taxes” that only apply to certain industries such as tobacco, gambling, and of course alcohol.

Increasing sin taxes is more or less acceptable to the public because part of their purpose to reduce the consumption of goods and services considered harmful. In some states, sin taxes are a major source of revenue. According to cost information website HowMuch.net, the state of Texas generated more than $1 billion in revenue from alcohol taxes in 2014. The runners-up were Florida, with $452 million and New York with $250 million.

That same year, Tennessee took in almost $148 million from alcohol taxes, accounting for about 1% of the states total tax revenue. I’m no tax expert, but that sounds low to me. Perhaps the state is comparatively lenient on the alcohol industry since producers of fine spirits are part of the state’s cultural history.

But that doesn’t mean those producers have it easy when it comes to taxes. They’re also subject to federal excise taxes (FET) on distilled spirits – which account for more than one-third of the shelf price of most alcohol brands when combined with state-levied taxes. Luckily, there is a chance those FETs could be reduced if the issue is given enough support. That’s something to keep in mind during this political season.

Alcoholic beverages have had this regulatory quirk where, even though they are considered foodstuffs, they are not required to have nutritional fact labels or ingredients lists. The reason for this is because alcoholic beverages are regulated by the TTB instead of the FDA. To date, the TTB has not put any major pressure on alcohol producers to label their products – but thanks to the largest trade association in the business, you may start to see nutrition facts for alcohol becoming widespread.

Earlier this month, the Beer Institute announced “The Brewers’ Voluntary Disclosure Initiative,” which aims to label beers with nutritional information – including a list of ingredients, serving size, calories, carbohydrates, fat, protein, and ABV.

As for how these labels should look, the Beer Institute is leaving that up to the individual breweries. The guidelines indicate that nutritional disclosures can appear as a label on the bottle, a reference to a website, or a QR code. Since the information provided is meant to be voluntary, the types of information disclosed will vary. For example, I can imagine lots of breweries not wanting to include an ingredients list.

Members of the Beer Institute are being encouraged to achieve compliance with the initiative by 2020. Several major breweries have already agreed to follow these guidelines, including:

Busch MillerCoors HeinekenUSA Constellation Brands Beer Division North American Breweries Craft Brew Alliance

Collectively, these breweries produce more than 81% of the volume of beer sold in the US – so you can expect other breweries to follow suit to stay competitive in the market.

When it comes to Tennessee’s proud history of whisky distilling, one thing that comes to mind for most folks is Jack Daniels Old No. 7. The legendary Jack Daniel Distillery in Lynchburg celebrates its 150th anniversary this year, and they’re using the occasion to officially clarify one of the formative points of the founder’s history – who gave him his start as one of America’s greatest distillers.

If you’ve ever taken a tour of the distillery, the origin of Jack Daniels is summed up as: when he was still a boy, Jasper Newton “Jack” Daniel was sent to work for Rev. Dan Call – a Lutheran preacher who also ran a general store and distillery. Call taught young Jack how to run the whisky still, and the rest is history. But, that’s not the whole story. Call, essentially running three business, was a busy man and actually instructed his slave and Master Distiller, Nearis Green, to teach Jack everything he knew.

Many historians, whisky enthusiasts, and Tennessee locals have known about Nearis Green for some time. In fact, a 1967 biography, Jack Daniel’s Legacy by Ben A. Green (no relation), quotes Call saying, “Uncle Nearest [sic] is the best whiskey maker that I know of.” However, the spotty record keeping of frontier history (making the details of Green’s involvement unclear) combined with the brand never addressing it during tours or in its marketing have kept the story from being widely known.

According to Phil Epps, global brand director for Jack Daniel’s, there had been “no conscious decision” to whitewash Green from history, but “as we dug into it we realized it was something that we could be proud of.” Now, fans of Old No. 7 will start hearing about Green in the distillery’s marketing campaigns and during facility tours.

This news got me thinking – do Green’s descendants have any claim on the rights to his likeness? That’s probably a question better suited for my colleague and personality rights expert, Stephen Zralek.