Slashdot Mirror
Budweiser Vetos Genetically Modified Rice
fishdan writes "Anheuser-Busch the makers of Budweiser and other beers, has stated that they will not buy rice from Missouri if genetically modified crops are allowed in the state. Budweiser is claimed to be the best selling beer in the world Bud Light is the second best selling. I wonder about the stats of Tsing Tao I'm not sure what they're afraid of from genetically modified rice. Do they think their beer could get any worse?"
Who cares when you are gettin drunk and watching the race!?
"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection." -- Sigmund Freud
there are plenty of people in the world who do not want anything to do with biotech food or drinks, so if it was known that budweiser contain GMO their sales would plummet in the world, especially in europe.
All the nascar fans will acquire the powers of, hmm, rice. Whenever they get drunk, they will become tasty and irresistable to asians.
Best Windows Freeware
All this time I thought Buddweiser only sold water!
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
All these companies are all up in arms about genetically altered crops. But my question is does it taste any different? I bet that if no one said anything, nobody would even be able to tell the different. If genetically modifying rice allows the rice to grow better, and faster, then so be it, people are thirsty out there, and this can help.
Actually after reading this, I could really go for a beer right now.
I'm not sure what they're afraid of from genetically modified rice.
They are afraid that they will lose customers. Since the public has not made up its mind as to whether genetically modified foods are safe to ingest, Budweiser does not want to alienate anyone who purchases their products.
Remember, people are afraid of the unknown. "Will it cause cancer?", "Am I going to turn into a mutant??", etc.
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
I don't drink beer, so I don't have first-hand experience on the matter, but to hear all the jokes about US beer (e.g., "How is American Beer like making love in a canoe?", from Monty Python's Live at the Hollywood Bowl), I'm surprised the overseas market for Budweiser is that large. Is this one of those cases where people complain about how bad a product is, and then they buy it anyway?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I see a clever new business opportunity here:
GenetiBrau: the Beer made from 100% genetically modified ingredients!
(I'd drink it.)
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Americans drink beery, watery-tasting piss.
Canadians drink watery, beery-tasting piss.
Aussies drink anything with alcohol in it.
Yeah, right.
All the nascar fans will acquire the powers of, hmm, rice. Whenever they get drunk, they will become tasty and irresistable to asians.
You got that the other way around: whenever you get drunk, asians become tasty and irresistable. I dated this incredibly cute Japanese girl last year and she had the best-tasting privates of any girl I've ever been with. I used to love to go down on her (and, needless to say, she was in 7th heaven when I did). Everytime I got drunk, we both knew what was going to happen that night...
Life is not all genetically modified skittles and beer you know!
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
No. 1 buyer of rice as well as its largest brewer, says it won't buy rice from Missouri if genetically modified, drug-making crops are allowed to be grown in the state.
It isn't that they don't want any gm rice to be grown in Missouri. They are concerned about contamination from rice designed to grow drugs. If drugs got into their beer then they would have some serious problems.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
Where I come from, beer is made from barley, hops, yeast and water.
Not rice, corn or potatoes.
Please do note that this is not a story about Budweiser not using GMO. In fact, there is nothing that says they are even against GM rice--just rice being modified to produce drugs grow outside, where it can potentially crosspollinate with rice meant for consumption. While the summary states that Anheuser-Busch "will not buy rice from Missouri if genetically modified crops are allowed in the state," the article clearly states they "won't buy rice from Missouri if genetically modified, drug-making crops are allowed to be grown in the state."
The trolling summary then continues on with links to the popularity of Bud and the uprising Tsing Tao for no obvious reason.
what Anheuser-Busch thinks of it's customers, about who they see as their potential new customers, and how they approach advertising to them.
They are fearful, not of the average white american's reaction to GM rice, but of the reaction from Hispanics, who are coming from agrarian cultures, and are doubly suspicious of any gm agri products, especially corn and rice.
Hispanics also represent the fastest growing group of drinkers of "Bud".
I don't know which scenario is scarier: modified rice, or rice in a beer!?
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
I like budwiser, the original Czech one of course :)
./R My blog
Geez ... another reason not to drink Budweiser so called beer. I still prefer real beer brewed following the Reinheitsgebot . No other stuff ... certainly not rice. If you wanna use rice.. call it something else.
Big US breweries switched to using rice in their mash during WW2 to appeal to the predominately female population and because of grain rationing. When the war ended, they found it was cheaper just to continue to use rice.
The microbrew craze a while back has become popular almost soley due to the fact that they're using "traditional" ingredients like malt to make a more robust tasting beer - like we used to drink.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
The problem is not that Anheuser-Busch is worried about pissing off Europe. The problem is that a drug company wants to produce rice designed to create a drug in open fields. Anheuser-Busch doesn't want that rice to contaminate their rice.
I am all for genetic engineering of pretty much everything, including things I stuff in my mouth. I don't think that genetic engineering is the boogie man. I don't even care if genetic strains blow to the wind and cross pollinate... so long as there is nothing in them that could potentially be harmful. Genetic cross pollination happens today all the time. Throwing in some human cracks at genetic code really doesn't worry me. That said, such genetic cross pollination needs to be treated like pollution.
It is a necessary evil, but it certainly needs some minimal level of oversight. If your genetic material is going to drift in the wind, you need to take responsibility for where it ends up, especially if it is harmful to other products. In the case of using genetic engineering to make crops produce drugs, Anheuser-Busch is right to put their foot down and demand steps be taken to prevent contamination of their own crops. It is one thing to catch a gene that makes your rice whiter down the wind from the farm a mile away, it is very much another thing to get a gene that puts a drug into rice meant for consumption.
IMO, this is just a straight up case of pollution. One guy wants to put something potentially harmful in the area. Either society needs to agree to accept the potential risks associated with the pollution, or steps need to be taken to limit the pollution (green houses come to mind). Whatever the case, the risks need to be understood or precautions taken. The fact that Anheuser-Busch, a company with absolutely zero interest in the debate otherwise is speaking up is a pretty clear indication that either the risks are not properly known, or that the risks are known and have been deemed too high.
It's true that there are over four times as many Chinese people as Americans; however, please bear in mind that the average American is over five times more massive than the average Chinese (even more if you don't grant them Yao's contribution!), and it logically follows that we consume more beer.
Of course, me being the sympathetic soul that I am, I try to do my part to level the playing field for our Chinese friends by not drinking Budweiser.
Maybe their ad agency balked at having to rewrite for their new motto:
"We use only the finest barrley mall*t, ryce*, hopps*, yeest*, and water."
--
make install -not war
GMO = sick.sick.sick. natural foods/meats and their cultivation are the keystones to human-thought evolution. Modifying them isnt part of cultivation, it's bastardizing an organism's growth process for profit. Plants/animals function in periods of seasons, and to try and alter that effects the nature of the plants ability to mature - which can deminish the amount of nutrients in the organism, and its consumer.
Real men drink only Real beer, not some suped up, GMO'd, fancy-pants lab engineered, hyper-modern Monsonto @!$#%. PERIOD
1. Beer should not contain rice.
2. It's debatable wether Budweiser is beer in the first place.
> I'm not sure what they're afraid of from
> genetically modified rice.
They are afraid that the anti-GM loons will launch a scare campaign about how drinking Bud will cause your kids to have three eyes.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I can't stand people who say bud/bud light/<insert american beer name here> doesn't taste like beer. Please realize that taste is subjective. Most people that I have met do not like the taste of beer and thus bud/bud light is a great choice for them when they do drink beer. It is also a good beer when you just want to drink a large quantity because it is not nearly as heavy as most "good" beers. Personally I am a fan of some American beers such as Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and Samual Adams Boston Lager. Both of those have significantly more taste than any A/B product but many people find them to taste putrid. Great! More for me!
Scott
beer made from rice ..... YUKKKKKKKK
Obviously, AB is worried that cross-pollination will occur in to rice used for Budweiser. Once the cross-pollination occurs, mutations will take place, causing Budweiser drinkers' IQs to double, making them too smart to drink swill like that :-)
Simply put, Budweiser tastes like hobo ass
That doesn't sound like a taste test I'd take part in, but to each his own.
I just think it's funny that Budweiser, knowing that not a single damn Canadian would buy THEIR Beer, just brew Canadian beer and stick it in Bud cans. There's a metaphor there, but I can't quite get a grip on it.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
So, what does a beer company need rice for? Hops, yeast, water, barley, that is what I expect in a beer. I do understand that beer is made of rice in regions where there is mostly rice instead of other crops, for practical, historical and cultural reasons.
What can we expect as upcoming news? "Budweiser Vetos Genetically Modified Mice?" Uggh..
Why is drinking American beer like making love in a canoe?
They're both fucking close to water!
The Bruces, Live at the Hollywood Bowl
fsh
And Czech Budweiser is among the best in the world.
Seriously.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I might buy their horrible swill just because it is GE!
And it's also quite false. Tsingtao only has 12% of the Chinese beer market, while Anheuser-Busch has a 50% share of the US market. And Americans drink quite a bit more beer per capita than the Chinese -- the Chinese beer market just recently surpassed the US market. A-B sells over 100 million barrels of beer a year. Tsingtao sells over 3 million tons of beer a year, which comes to about 25 million barrels.
By the way, Anheuser-Busch owns 27% of Tsingtao. A-B made that move because the Chinese beer market is growing a lot faster than the US market. Also, China is ripe for consolidation, just like the US was in the 1950s.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Note to moderators: The parent post speaks wisdom. Please mod up.
I brew my own beer too. Adjuncts can be anything starchy. Don't forget that many brewers often add honey, molassas, even lactose for interesting taste effects.
The key factor is that none of these ingredients should be a major constituent of the beer. In other words, you should be preparing beer, not mead; so don't go overboard on the honey.
Also, the use of hops is relatively recent. Beer recipies have been found in the oldest records known to humanity. You can find them in Babelonian clay tablets, and on Egyptian tombs. Against that backdrop, hops are relatively recent --they've only been in common use for the last three centuries or so.
So what is beer? Beer's primary constituent should be fermented maltose. That's it. Everything else is up for grabs...
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
Who knows what are potential long-term side-effects of genetic engineering ? ...
Mandatory Battery Acid + Isopropyl Alcohol drinks for everyone! Huzzah!
Yeah, right.
There's not actually any such drink as a 'Bud Ick'. But it's an expression you hear frequently all the same.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Many people dont trust genetically modified rice. They think that it has many bad side-effects.
Sacramento Business Journal - 1:10 PM PDT Monday
http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/stories/200