Is The Government Shutdown Hurting Small Brewers and Distillers?

By Anthony Todd in Food on Oct 4, 2013 5:15PM

The government shutdown is all over the news, but aside from access to national parks and some sensational stories about medical treatment, there hasn't been much about what might affect us average people. Turns out that there are some pretty significant ramifications for the craft brewing and distilling industries.

Even before the shutdown, we'd been hearing tons of rumors about delays in label approval for spirits. Before a spirit can go onto the market, the feds (the Alcohol Tax and Trade Bureau) have to approve every tiny detail of the labels. At one point, this only took a few weeks, but as craft distilling has exploded (and government funding has decreased, thanks to the sequester), every distillery we've talked to has complained about wait times that top three months. Now, that's only going to get worse.

GuysDrinkingBeer published a great rundown yesterday on how the shutdown will affect craft brewers. While the feds don't require label approval for non-crazy beers sold within the state of Illinois, Illinois itself requires that federal approval.

From the Illinois Liquor Control Commission’s rules and regulations regarding labeling:

No manufacturer, nonresident dealer, distributor or importing distributor shall affix any label to any package or container containing alcoholic liquor for sale or delivery in the State of Illinois until such label has been submitted to and approved by the federal government.

That's not going to be happening anytime soon. That means that any new beer that wasn't approved before the shutdown may have to wait a while longer.