Distilleries Avoid Huge Fee For Making Pandemic Hand Sanitizer

The distilleries who made emergency batches of hand sanitizer during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic will not be charged a hefty federal fee for doing so, reports USA Today.

Driven by uncertainty and fear regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans bought up all the supplies of hand sanitizer throughout the country. Realizing the shortage of hand sanitizers left their communities in need, many U.S. distilleries started using their facilities to make hand sanitizer. Months, later those same distilleries found out that their good deed would be punished because the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was charging them a $14,060 Monograph Drug Facility Fee for creating the hand sanitizer.

With the fee due in early 2021, distilleries faced a significant struggle until the Department of Health and Human Services released a New Year's Eve Twitter statement explaining that it had directed the FDA to waive the fees. For distilleries, that was quite the way to end a hard year.