DATE: Wednesday, October 29, 1997           TAG: 9710290062

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   83 lines

THINK BEFORE GUZZLING...IS THERE AN ANIMAL IN YOUR BEER?

THERE ARE animal-safe cosmetics, cow-free leather belts, no-cruelty shoes. And, yes, fish-bladder-free beers.

And during this international time of beer tasting - Oktoberfest and the winter holiday season and all that - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is imploring party-goers to think before guzzling.

``Dear Features Editor,'' reads a postcard sent by the Norfolk-based animal-rights group to media outlets around the country, ``Oktoberfest celebrations would fall flat without beer, but vegetarians beware: Some brands contain animal ingredients or processing agents.''

By ``agents,'' PETA means things like pepsin from pig stomachs, used to make beer foamy. And fish bladders, used to filter beer of sediments and other impurities.

On the front of the postcard is a picture of a wide-eyed goldfish swimming uncomfortably in a mug of sudsy beer.

``Don't Let Uninvited Guests Sink Your Oktoberfest Party'' is the catch-phrase printed below.

``The whole notion of `clarifying' beer is uniquely American, and we want consumers to know there are alternatives,'' said Michael McGraw, a PETA media coordinator in Norfolk who is working on the animal-safe beer campaign.

The campaign actually is part of a larger public-relations effort encouraging more Americans to stop eating meat and go vegetarian. ``It's one of our largest and most active campaigns,'' McGraw said.

PETA has compiled a sizeable list of beers that do not use animal products. They include a wide array of major stocks and microbrews - Budweiser to Blue Ridge, Coors to Columbus, Miller to Mad River, Sam Adams to Sierra Nevada.

The findings are based on a questionnaire sent to brewers across the globe.

What the group can't say with certainty is what beers still utilize animal parts. Dozens of brewers did not return PETA's survey, McGraw said, and information about beer-making procedures is strictly confidential.

The Siebel School of Chicago, an acclaimed training academy for prospective brewmeisters, said most of the breweries that still rely on animal ingredients are in Great Britain and Australia. (Still, it should be noted that several British beers are animal-friendly, according to PETA's survey, including Whitbread and Newcastle.)

South Africa filtered its beers with ox bladders for years but recently ended that practice, according to the school.

In Germany, the wunder-capital of Oktoberfest, where people sit under huge tents and drain powerful steins of ales and lagers carried by equally powerful waitresses, a Bavarian purity law keeps things simple.

Beers there can be made from just four ingredients: water, grain, hops and yeast, according to a national brewery law passed in the year 1516. That means no pig guts, no fish bladders.

In an animal-free beer test conducted by PETA's German office, Beck's Beer was the winner - although a picture of the test-takers afterward would indicate that there were few losers.

Not that American beers are politically incorrect. Far from it. Mega-brewers such as Anheuser-Busch, Miller and Coors have pledged in writing to PETA that their products are made without animal additives.

And most microbrews, an increasingly popular alternative in the marketplace, are ``cruelty-free'' as well, McGraw said, including Weeping Raddish from the Outer Banks and Steamship from Norfolk.

``When you add in all that other stuff, it's not real beer,'' said Lee Scanlon, president of Steamship Brewing Co. of Norfolk. ``We're making the real thing here.''

To remove impurities, for example, Steamship uses paper filters instead of fish bladders, Scanlon said.

The bladders he and others described once were common among American brewers. The organs were dried out, ground up and sprinkled on top of beer storage basins to soak up sediments and other unwanted particles.

High cost and inconsistencies in the final product pushed American breweries to look elsewhere, according to the Beer Institute, a trade group in Washington, D.C.

Anheuser-Busch, which operates a large brewery in Williamsburg, said it uses diatomaceous earth as a filter. It also relies on beechwood chips, instead of fish bladders, to aid in the fermentation process, according to the company.

Pepsin, from pig stomachs, was ``used in the old time by some brewers'' as a way to improve the sudsy shelf life of a beer, Anheuser-Busch said. Hardly any breweries use this additive anymore, the company said.

The main contributor to foam in many Anheuser-Busch products is hops, although some brewers also add a sea weed derivative to help make suds. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

A postcard from PETA warns...

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