If this doesn’t make your blood boil, I’m not sure what will. Reason recently reported on an absolutely bizarre and insane action by the FDA, going back to the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
At that time the nation’s hand sanitizer manufacturing capability was stretched to the limit, resulting in frequent out-of-stock conditions as well as stores having to limit quantities when replenishments were finally available. Many small distilleries which normally produce the potable varieties of alcohol, decided to switch over to making hand sanitizer to help fill in the gap.
Well, no good deed goes unpunished. The FDA has levied these distilleries with a five-figure fee ($14,060 if you want to be exact) normally reserved for much larger pharmaceutical and manufacturing companies. To those companies, this kind of fee is a rounding error in budgets of millions. To a small craft distillery, though? Another $14,060 out of pocket in a year where sales have already been hit hard is potentially devastating.
I get that the FDA plays an important role in public safety. However, this is an unprecedented global health emergency we are talking about. I’m absolutely outraged that this is what some boneheads at the FDA have decided to do: levy rubber-stamp and cookie-cutter fees to small business ill-equipped to pay them, ignoring the reality of the health emergency before us.