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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 this time I thought Buddweiser only sold water!
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
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 see a clever new business opportunity here:
GenetiBrau: the Beer made from 100% genetically modified ingredients!
(I'd drink it.)
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
If you RTFA, you'd notice that this is not about genetically modifying rice to have to grow better or faster. This is about a drug company that wants to use rice to produce human proteins to be used at drugs--not rice for consumption! The fear here (from Anheuser-Busch) is about cross-pollination with normal rice strains.
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".
Most people are idiots. Pretentious beer drinks are worse.
(I don't drink beer. I'm pretentious about high-end vodkas).
Wikipedia on Budweiser
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I RTFA, and this really isn't so much about GM rice, more about other effects of GM, but no doubt the GPs point is still valid.
To answer your question:
Budweiser is by far the most widely consumed US originated beer here in the UK. That is if you call it beer. Having lived in the US for some time I appreciated most beer sold in bars was very cold (glasses often kept in a fridge), very fizzy (unless the bar was out of CO2/N) and quite tasteless. That wasn't/isn't always a bad thing - if dehydrated I don't know what could be nicer than a watery cold drink - and if going out with the aim of getting drunk I don't think the quality matters after the second pint - but if drinking beer for beer the taste is extremely important and that's what US mass brews lack - taste. If looking for a fizzy somewhat (but not very) tasty beer that will deliver sugars in your blood Bud is a good choice of many (bar excellent German lagers which are not highly available in the US).
This is not to dismiss US beer as a whole, micro-brew is a massively growing industry and has some excellent choices. But to drink beer for being beer ice cold piss isn't always good. If you're not a big beer drinker why not try something like Old Speckeld Hen or whatever local micro-brew markets itself as strong in taste, it could give you a fresh perspective.
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.
Exactly. American beers like Bud and Miller are designed to be drunk ice-cold, so you can't actually taste the rankness.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Simply put, Budweiser tastes like hobo ass. The only lager that tastes worse, IMO is Foster's. They both have the defining characteristic of wickedly nasty aftertaste.
As a Guinness drinker, I'm blond-beer biased anyway, but in those rare instances when that's not available, there's a dozen beers I'd rather have first. Heineken is quite smooth, Castlemaine XXXX has a nice punch to it, for example.
Disclaimer: I have not tried any of the American bargain beers: Pabst, Schlitz, Colt 45, etc., so I could ultimately be wrong.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Real men drink only Real beer, not some suped up, GMO'd, fancy-pants lab engineered, hyper-modern Monsonto @!$#%. PERIOD
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I'm like you - I prefer not to be able to see through my beers. Even better if light appears to bend into the the beer's event horizon.
That being said, I love Red Stripe beer. If you hate most lagers you might like Red Stripe.
PS: For dark beers, Deschutes Brewery makes Black Butte Porter. Their Obsidian Stout sucks, IMO, but the Black Butte is awesome.
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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.
And thanks to you (and your children), we'll all know if they are harmful in about 10/20 years. There have been many things hailed as harmless by the companies hawking them; absbestos, Thalidomide (v. nasty), tobacco blah blah blah. They are just molecules, now we're talking genes. God, how often do we hear of the "unknown long term effects of Ecstacy" been touted as reason not to take it?
If you want to take their word for it being "harmless", then I am quite glad to have you as my guinea pig!! :-)
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.
Opinions here in Europe on GM are mostly sceptical. "GM free" is a selling point, and Bud cares about how many units it shifts more than anything else on the planet. If there rice were to be contaminated, it would definately make the news and cost them sales. No one would be pissed off, they just wouldn't sell any.
Sales of Bud aren't as high as they once were say 10 years ago. It's got an "asshole" stigma about it here now; it's kinda what US style "jocks" would drink if I were to think of an equivalent social group to what we have here. European beers had lots of ad drives over the last while, and frankly few could argue that Bud wins on taste. So, bud took a pasting. Risking further losses would be dangerous as they have investments in "brewed under license" franchises.