Where bureaucrats are bureaucrats ... and yeast are scared.

When I heard the news that brewers yeast had been chosen by the state of Oregon as its official state microbe, my initial impulse was to cheer – but not too loudly, lest the Floyd County Health Department hear all the shouting and conclude it must henceforth regard all microbes as human pathogens – because of course all human pathogens are microbes — and accordingly, brewers yeast must be outlawed in Floyd County … or barring the ban, subject at the very least to a special handling fee each time it is pitched in the brewhouse.

Not that any of the department's reasoning exists in tangible statute.

Where do I pay?

Meanwhile ...

Oregon Designates Official State Microbe (Lowering the Bar)

... Oregon's official microbe is now Saccharomyces cerevisia, also known as "brewer's yeast." As one witness at the committee hearing put it, "[t]his great little microbe is probably responsible for the civilization of mankind," given that there is some evidence that grain was first domesticated (and fermented with yeast) so humans could get drunk, not so they could feed themselves.