Steve Bohner of Alchemy Distillery [All photos from Alchemy Distillery’s Facebook page]
On December 30, several local distilleries, along with hundreds of others in the United States, received emails informing them that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was charging a fee of $ 14,060 for the creation of hand sanitizer in response to the crisis of COVID-19. The emergence of furious complaints that resulted from the fee led to a hasty termination of unexpected costs.
Disinfectant made at Alchemy Distillery.
Amy Bohner, co-owner with Steve Bohner of Alchemy Distillery, told us: “On the 30th, we received an email from the California Artisanal Distillers Guild saying that you have a $ 14,060 fee that expires in February. FDA, you need to hurry up and cancel the registration to not be charged by 2021! “
Bohner was horrified. “We only made disinfectant in April,” she explained. “I think it was in March that St. Joe’s sent a letter … They were having a hard time finding disinfectant. There are five distilleries in Humboldt, as far as I know – four of us ended up making disinfectant. We did batch after batch for a month. “
They stopped producing their normal spirits for sale and started creating hand sanitizers for free. “We follow the recipe recommended by WHO [World Health Organization,” Bohner said. “We followed all the guidance we were given. We registered with the FDA. (It was kind of a scary step).”
Alchemy Distillery weren’t the only ones. “I looked it up,” Bohner explained. “This was such an incredible year. 835 distilleries had made hand sanitizer, too.”
After word got around that Alchemy was making sanitizer, she explained, “We started getting calls asking for more.” They provided the bottles to those in need. Bohner said they took “bottles to the hospitals and the Fire Department and the Sheriff’s Department.”
Alchemy Distillery’s Steve Bohner dropping off sanitizer with Supervisor Rex Bohn and Sheriff Billy Honsal.
“We didn’t make one penny,” she said. “We spent thousands of dollars of our own money.”
Graphic shared by Alchemy Distillery last summer.
Eventually, supply caught up with demand as companies that normally produced sanitizer ramped up production and Alchemy Distillery was able to return to making their products for sale.
But at the very end of December, months after they had finished stepping up and creating sanitizer, Bohner said she received a notice of the over $14,000 fee.
“I guess they said it was because we were selling a drug–whether we sold or donated it,” she noted. “If we made a lot or if we made 1 gallon.”
“I felt nauseous,” she told us. “I was trying to enjoy New Year’s Eve with my husband but kept thinking, ‘This is asinine…To think we would have to pay on top of donating…This can’t be the thanks we get… .”
She didn’t sit quietly though and neither did distilleries and their supporters across the nation. “We kicked into gear,” she said. “There was a petition to sign. I contacted our government representatives everyone I could think of.”
Steve Bohner at Alchemy Distillery delivering sanitizer to Humboldt Bay Fire.
The outpouring of support the distilleries got forced the FDA to rescind the fee. “We got an email yesterday from the American Craft Spirits Association,” Bohner told us. “They worked with the Department of Health and Human Services. They went to the media. It was apparently the Department of Health and Human Services that got it overturned.”
Although, Bohner is relieved that the fee got overturned, she told us, “It makes you a little wary of working with the FDA and the federal government when they could just flippantly make a decision like that.”
She added, “[The proposed fee] it won’t stop us from taking care of our community, but it was really a slap in the face. “
Bohner told us that even knowing in April that the FDA would charge a $ 14,000 fee, Alchemy Distillery would have made the hand sanitizer anyway. “I don’t regret it,” she said. “I am very proud to be committed and caring for our community. I would do it again and take out a loan to pay the fee … It was the right thing to do ”.
