While I support the Occupy Wall Street movement, this is something even nearer and dearer to my heart. I don’t know who came up with it, I saw it when Firestone Walker tweeted it, along with the hashtag #OccupythePub and the simple message: “Craft beer drinkers unite. We might only be 5% of the market but we are 95% of the noise!” What a great slogan and a great idea to build awareness for craft beer. We are the 5%!
The Jester King Craft Brewery in Austin, Texas, is my new hero, but then I’m a fan of their Don Quixote kind of crazy. The windmill they’re currently tilting at is the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC).
Like most states, and the Federal government, most of the laws regarding alcohol were written in the months following the passage of the 21st Amendment, which ended Prohibition. Unfortunately, most laws and especially regulations, are rarely updated or amended. And while that may be fine for most laws, after 78 years the beer landscape in America is vastly different than it was when the regulations were implemented. Then, the different kinds of beer being made were significantly more modest than today. A lot of the laws that currently govern how beer is defined, sold, distributed and labeled are incredibly antiquated.
I didn’t know specifically how bad it was in Texas, but I was certainly aware of the federal regs and several other states that have similar inconsistencies between their regulations and reality. Essentially, these laws make it mandatory that brewers lie about what their beer is and/or force them to omit information that consumers would undoubtedly find useful. So Jester King, and two other unnamed co-plaintiffs, is suing the TABC in federal court.
Below is their press release explaining what they’re trying to do:
Jester King Craft brewery, maker of artisan farmhouse ales in the beautiful Texas Hill Country on the outskirts of Austin, has filed suit against the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC). On Wednesday, attorneys representing Jester King Craft Brewery and two other co-plaintiffs filed a motion for summary judgment in federal court asking that the case be decided in our favor.
We have sued the TABC because we believe that its Code violates our rights under the 1st and 14th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. Under the Code, we are not allowed to tell the beer drinking public where our beer is sold. We are also not permitted to use accurate terms to describe our beers. We are often forced to choose either to label them inaccurately or not to make beers that we would like to brew. Under the bizarre, antiquated naming system mandated by the TABC Code, we have to call everything we brew over 4% alcohol by weight (ABW) “Ale” or “Malt Liquor” and everything we brew at or below 4% ABW “beer.” This results in nonsensical and somewhat comical situations where we have to call pale ale at or below 4% ABW “pale beer” and lager that is over 4% ABW “ale.” The State has arrogantly and autocratically cast aside centuries of rich brewing tradition by taking it upon itself to redefine terms that reference flavor and production method as a simple shorthand for alcoholic strength.
At the same time, the State prohibits breweries from using other terms that accurately reference alcoholic strength like “strong” or “low alcohol.” That means you will not be seeing any Belgian or American Strong Ale in Texas. Further, the State restricts the contexts in which we can communicate the actual alcohol content of our beers. We are not allowed to put the alcoholic content on anything the State considers advertising, which includes our website and social media. We are simply seeking to exercise free and truthful speech about the beer we make and strongly believe that the State has no interest in keeping you from knowing the type of beer we make, how strong it is, or where it’s sold.
Our claim under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, maintains that breweries, like wineries, should be able to sell their products directly to the public. Right now in Texas, we cannot sell our beer at our brewery. We can only sell beer through a retailer or distributor. When people visit Jester King and ask to buy our beer, we have to tell them, “Sorry, it’s illegal.” Brewpubs are faced with an equal and opposite restriction. They can sell beer on-site, but cannot sell beer through a retailer or distributor. Texas wineries on the other hand are allowed to sell on-site and through retailers and distributors. We are suing because the State has no rational interest in maintaining special restrictions aimed at limiting the sale of beer.
Finally, the lawsuit challenges the State’s requirement that every foreign brewery wishing to sell beer in Texas obtain its own separate license. Foreign wineries and distilleries are not burdened by this requirement. They may simply sell their products in Texas through an importer that has one license for all the wine and spirits it brings into our state. The result is that small, artisan beer makers often have their beer kept out of Texas by unduly burdensome fees.
When we started Jester King, part of our plan was to help other small, artisan brewers, from both the United States and abroad, sell their products in Texas. This is something that we remain interested in doing at some point, which is where our material interest in this part of the case comes into play. Our much larger interest, however, is in allowing Texas beer drinkers to have access to the beers that helped shape our desire to build an authentic farmhouse brewery in the Texas Hill Country and that have had a direct influence on the type of beers that we have set out to brew. Many of these beers are from small overseas breweries whose products are currently being sold elsewhere in the U.S., but not in Texas because of exorbitant licensing fees. We would like to have the ability to purchase these beers in our local market and would like for all Texas beer drinkers to be able to do the same.
We have chosen to pursue these matters in federal court after witnessing the lack of progress that has resulted from previous attempts to address the inequities of the TABC Code legislatively. During the last legislative session, there were bills aimed at giving breweries and brewpubs similar rights to Texas wineries, but these bills never even made it out of committee.
We cannot say how likely we are to succeed in this lawsuit. The State has only to show a rational basis for restricting our freedom and the freedom of beer drinkers in this matter. However, as long as there is a TABC Code in Texas that discriminates against and puts undue burdens on breweries both home and abroad, we will continue to do everything in our power to fight for a more just and free system for us and for beer drinkers in our state.
As they say, their quest is a difficult one and the likelihood of success somewhat unlikely, sad to say. But the effort of bringing attention to these problems may increase awareness of them, both in Texas and elsewhere, and long term might start down the long road to changing them and bring them in line with reality. It may be a long quest, but hopefully it’s not an impossible dream.
Good luck, Jester King. This kind of thing should be happening in every state.
While searching for more information about yesterday’s featured artist for my Beer In Art series, I discovered a second artist named Ben Sanders, this one working as an illustrator in Australia. Perhaps more importantly, he’s actually worked on a campaign to reduce drunk driving down under. The campaign, sponsored by the Motor Accident Commission, was designed to try and reduce drunk driving in the rural areas of southern Australia. Called Prevent Mate Morphosis, it employs a device you’d never see used by our own government and especially not by the neo-prohibitionists: irreverent humor.
Here’s how they describe the campaign:
Just like on the footy field, mateship is the glue that unites regional communities.
Mates look out for mates — it’s a big part of the Aussie culture. And they’d never intentionally do anything that would cause us harm. It’s just that sometimes, our mates can turn into blokes who, let’s just say, make bad decisions. Especially on the roads.
In this advertising campaign we’ve come up with a new name for this change in a mate’s behaviour. We’re calling it “Matemorphosis” — when your mate gets behind the wheel and morphs into a knob.
They continue by saying it’s “For Country People, By Country People:”
This is the first road safety campaign that’s specifically made for country South Australians, by country South Australians. The TV ads don’t use actors, but real people from different regions across SA and were filmed at Callington Football Club oval.
The campaign acknowledges that too many deaths occur on our roads because country roads are different to anywhere else. We all know we can’t change where we drive, but we can change how we drive. And the campaign makes the point that it’s up to all of us to make country roads safer.
But they sure seem like they’d get your attention far more effectively because they stop and make you think. Then they make you laugh, which in my mind would make them more memorable, as well.
Obviously, not all the idioms would translate to American English, but surely we could come up with equally effective and equally funny ones. Not that the folks in MADD and their ilk would, or even could, embrace any strategy that might involve humor. They’d undoubtedly complain that you can’t make light of so serious a problem. But if it furthers their supposed goal of reducing drunk driving, it really shouldn’t matter how the message is communicated, so long as it’s effective. Frankly, I’ve always believed you’d get a lot further being reasonable and human than constantly hammering the same serious propaganda.
And below is one of the billboards in action. I’d much rather see this on the road than a frying pan with an egg in it telling me that’s my brain or a needle sticking out of a bottle of beer equating it to heroin. Such heavy-handed imagery doesn’t work because it doesn’t ring true. It looks like propaganda because it is propaganda. Maybe a little humor would be better? It’s making me laugh … and pay attention.
Here’s a fun video about craft beer’s struggles to get to market. With a hat tip to Brian Stechschulte at Bay Area Craft Beer, it’s a student film by a Michael Jolly, done for his “Motion Graphics class. It’s an animated info graphic concerning American Craft Beer. I created all artwork, narration, and animation myself. Hope you enjoy it…And drink craft beer!” He’s titled it: Craft Beer: A True Underdog Story.
When is a report not a report? When it’s created as propaganda by an organization with the sole purpose of advancing its anti-alcohol agenda. In fact, just calling such propaganda a “report” seems dishonest in and of itself. Witness today’s press release from the self-appointed sheriff of Alcohol Alley, the newly renamed Alcohol Justice (f.k.a. the Marin Institute) entitled “Drunk With Power: Industry Kills Alcohol Mitigation Fees in California in 2010.” Talk about a loaded title. To my mind, a “report” should at least pretend to be an impartial, unbiased examination of a set of data. But as the title suggests, those of us in the alcohol industry are all “drunks,” abusing power and indiscriminately “killing.” That’s how we’re portrayed, as pure evil. Yeah, that describes me and just about everybody I know in the beer world. I hate kids and dogs, and just love pulling the wings off of flies, just for the fun of it.
The press release explains that the “report” examines the political lobbying by alcohol companies and money spent by them. Now I’m not a big fan generally of the corporate influence of our current political system, but it’s not illegal. The reason Alcohol Justice (AJ) is able to compile the lobbying money spent is because it has to be disclosed at all levels. It is, in plainer terms, legal and transparent. Nobody’s done anything wrong. They claim it “details the ever-present dominance of the alcohol industry and its lobbyists on California policymakers in 2010.” But dominance over whom? Over what? It’s not as if alcohol companies are the only people or organizations spending money on lobbying. Every company and/or industry does so. Their corporate charters all but demand that they engage in lobbying. Like it or not, it’s a part of doing business in California and the United States.
The majority of the AJ “report” includes a long list of money received by California politicians from alcohol lobbyists or as political contributions. And they’re drawing the conclusion that they therefore must have been bought off. But their “report” proves no direct correlation between receiving money and how a politician votes on legislation having to do with alcohol regulation. In fact, some of their data seems to contradict that idea.
Just looking at money received from one sector ignores any money they may also have received from any other, possibly even competing, industry or interest. And it doesn’t take into account what portion of the total money any politician received comes from alcohol and/or who else gave them contributions.
Maybe I’m jaded, but even the amounts themselves seem small, especially as a percentage of the total they received. Total lobbying expenditure by all alcohol companies is $1.3 million, according to AJ. One figure I found said that there was $552.6 million spent on lobbying in California in 2008. So that means the alcohol portion, even if they spent that much three years ago, is only 0.23% of all lobbying dollars spent. Hardly the “drunk with power” that AJ churlishly decries. That hardly demonstrates a “dominance of the alcohol industry and its lobbyists,” as they characterize it. More like a drop in the pint glass that is California politics.
The executive summary of the “report” claims that alcohol companies spent $5 million on both lobbying, campaign contributions and other political spending in 2010. Given how big our economy is, that also seems like a vanishingly small amount, especially when it is claimed that it bought so much. According to Follow the Money, California campaign contributions totaled $716,750,583 for 2010. AJ claims that of that $5 million figure, $1,572,939 was spent on candidate contributions. That means that a mere 0.22% of campaign contributions come from alcohol companies. Again, that hardly indicates the undue influences that AJ claims in their “report.”
To me, it’s just as likely that many, if not most, of the politicians don’t view the alcohol companies as pure evil, the way Alcohol Justice does. They probably see them as job creators, having a positive impact on a depressed economy and providing some enjoyment to their customers, quite necessary when so many people are out of work and their spirits so low. Not everybody who drinks abuses it, in fact most people don’t.
The politicians are most likely just people like you and me who like a drink once in a while. They’re part of the majority of people who drink moderately and responsibly, and therefore they can see the legislation for what it is: the work of fanatics who see compromise as a weakness, view all alcohol as bad, believe moderation is not the answer, and for whom only total prohibition is the only result that will satisfy them. And so they vote against it, like they should; like any reasonable person would. The majority of their constituents don’t agree with the radical ideas of neo-prohibitionists. Like most reasonable people, these politicians and the people they represent, don’t see alcohol as inherently bad; the only negative is the abuse of it by a small minority that is rarely addressed by legislation claiming to be for that purpose.
The “mitigation fees” they claim were killed by lobbying are not even a true metric. The idea that the companies that make and sell alcohol should have to pay for the damage caused by its abuse by a minority of individuals is not exactly a time worn idea. NRA lobbyists are not working to insure that gun makers don’t have to pay to mitigate the “harm” done by people shooting one another with their guns. Likewise, the red meat industry isn’t working to insure that cattle ranchers and meat packing plant owners don’t have to pay to mitigate the “harm” done by people who eat too much steak and hamburgers. Those are, quite properly, matters of personal responsibility. But according to the AJ, there is no personal responsibility for the actions of people who abuse alcohol. In that case, it’s always the fault of the people who make and sell it.
The “report” also claims that “only $10,000 was reported being spent by the industry in San Francisco to defeat Supervisor John Avalos’ Charge for Harm fee” (emphasis added), which made me laugh. Avalos may have introduced it, but it was really a Marin Institute (now AJ) initiative from start to finish. But they mention that because they think more money was spent, and wasn’t disclosed. Talk about being a sore loser.
The report also singles out a couple of politicians for their association with the alcohol industry. For example, they detail how former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom is, in their words, “firmly entrenched in the alcohol industry.” And that is offered as the only proof that he is somehow beholden to the interests of alcohol companies. It’s incredibly insulting to suggest that someone in politics is incapable of being impartial if they also derive some of their income from the alcohol trade. It could simply be, as Newsom himself suggested, that he saw through the “charge for harm” fiasco and viewed it for what is was — a bad idea that unfairly punished the majority of law-abiding responsible citizens — as so many others did.
The “report” begins, and ends, with the conclusion that “[t]he alcohol industry continued its ever-present dominance at all levels of California politics in 2010.” But the numbers they cite in their self-fulfilling “report” are meaningless in the vacuum of their reasoning without placing them in the larger context of the much more complicated state of politics in California. $5 million sounds like a lot of money until you actually think about how little that is compared to everything else that the state is facing. The alcohol industry in California isn’t drunk with power in California. Hell, it isn’t even tipsy.
In the same year that the alcohol industry spent $3,683,148 (the AJ’s $5 million figure minus lobbying), California agriculture spent $9,658,149, the computer industry spent $30,749,507, the energy industry spent $72,667,630, finance, insurance and real estate interests spent $64,002,966, the health care industry spent $18,759,752 and labor unions spent $76,563,954. Those industries spent 2.6, 8, 20, 17, 5 and 21 times the alcohol industry, respectively. Geez, just general business interests (not part of a specific industry) spent $29,912,733, over 8 times what the alcohol industry spent. Maybe it’s not the alcohol industry after all that’s drunk with power.
Today, Anheuser-Busch InBev is promoting a new holiday focusing on safe and responsible drinking behavior and especially using designated drivers. They’re calling the effort “Global Be(er) Responsible Day.” From the press release:
More than 1,500 Anheuser-Busch employees across the United States won’t be at their desks on Friday, Sept. 23. Instead, they’ll be out visiting bars, restaurants and grocery stores to promote the use of designated drivers.
It’s all part of Global Be(er) Responsible Day, an annual effort organized by Anheuser-Busch and its sister companies around the world.
“For three decades, Budweiser has been leading the way in the promotion of designated drivers,” said Kathy Casso, vice president of Corporate Social Responsibility for Anheuser-Busch. “Our programming to encourage responsible drinking takes place all year long, but on Global Be(er) Responsible Day our employees are making an extra push to spread the message in partnership with wholesalers, retailers and many other partners.”
TAKE THE PLEDGE
Casso and Finger encourage adults to show their friends they care by visiting Budweiser’s Facebook page, clicking on the “Bud DD” tab and pledging their support of designated drivers. Where legal, consumers who take the pledge may be eligible to win a prize from Budweiser.
“The vast majority of adults enjoy our beers responsibly and we have made progress in reducing drunk driving,” Casso said. “So let’s all work together so we can keep moving in the right direction. By visiting Budweiser’s Facebook page and signing up to be a designated driver, you can show you support the important role that designated drivers play in enjoying the great times.”
DESIGNATED DRIVER FACTS
In conjunction with Global Be(er) Responsible Day, new research from GfK Custom Research North America was released showing promising news in the area of designated driver use and awareness, including that 64% of American adults — or 141 million people 21+ — have been a designated driver or have been driven home by one.
The 2011 Designated Driver poll also showed that 86 percent of respondents think that promoting the use of designated drivers is an excellent or good way to help reduce drunk driving. The full survey results are available at alcoholstats.com.
LIFE-SAVING RESEARCH
On Thursday Anheuser-Busch will host in St. Louis a meeting of a working group of the Traffic Injury Research Foundation, an independent group of law enforcement experts, at its corporate headquarters. The group recently released a report, Effective Strategies to Reduce Drunk Driving, and will be in St. Louis to continue their research as they search for proven strategies to reduce drunk driving on American roadways.
A lot of progress has been achieved in reducing drunk driving, according to the group’s 2010 report, but experts agree there’s still more work to be done.
TIRF’s ground-breaking research on the nation’s DWI system has been supported by Anheuser-Busch for more than 20 years.
Now sure it’s P.R. designed to show ABI in a positive light, but that doesn’t make it automatically bad. It’s still a good effort and deserves to be acknowledged. In fact, ABI is composed of people who do care is people die driving drunk. ABI is comprised of fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, aunt, uncles, etc.; people like you and me. I may not always agree with ABI’s business practices or like a lot of their products, but I’ve known many good people, past and present, who work for A-B, and now ABI. They’re not the monsters that Alcohol Justice (nee the Marin Institute, before they re-branded themselves the new moral sheriff in town) and the other anti-alcohol groups make them out to be.
But you can hear the deafening silence of Alcohol Justice, and the others, applauding ABI’s effort. You’d think the self-styled alcohol “industry watchdog” would be able to praise, as well as criticize. You’d think that’s what an observer would, and should, be able to do. But naturally, their website is completely silent, preferring to communicate only what alcohol companies do wrong, which is everything. I’m convinced they can’t even conceive of ever portraying any alcohol company being praiseworthy for anything. As long as I’ve been watching the watchdogs, they’ve never once said anything positive about any alcohol company.
But the message of driving responsibly and using designated drivers is a good one, and efforts to raise awareness of the issue should be applauded, regardless of where they come from. So I, for one, say good job ABI, for promoting Global Be(er) Responsible Day.
I used to think of Slate’s online magazine as cutting edge stuff, but lately their coverage, at least of things I know something about, shows them to be staunchly conservative. Given that they’re owned by the Washington Post, I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised.
Today an article by William Saletan on the web titlebar is known by the more balanced title “MADD vs. Rick Berman’s American Beverage Institute: Who’s Right About Drunken Driving?” but on the webpage itself by the much less so “Mad at MADD: Alcohol merchants say you shouldn’t donate to Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Really?” (I’m hardly perfect, but I still can’t help but point out it’s not usually referred to as “drunken driving,” but “drunk driving.”)
The article itself is all smoke and mirrors, and starts out by trying to sound reasonable, before veering way off the rails of reasonableness, much like MADD itself, who the author wastes no time in defending. What got apparent MADD-shill William Saletan’s hackles raised was that someone had the temerity to suggest that the neo-prohibitionist organization was not ready for sainthood. Specifically, the American Beverage Institute released a press release pointing out that “Mothers Against Drunk Driving Receives Another ‘D’ from Charity Rating Guide.” The fact that their press release is true seems not to matter, nor is the fact that this is not the first year that MADD’s rating as a charity has been called into question. Saletan accuses the release of “shouting,” as if a press release could shout without turning on the ALL CAPS. Hey Bill, LISTEN UP; that’s how you shout in print.
But his real beef is that he seems to believe that the ABI shouldn’t be allowed to criticize MADD since they’re a trade organization that represents the interests of alcohol producers, therefore anything they have to say on the subject is suspect. It’s an argument that has some merit, but only if it works both ways. MADD has been twisting facts for decades, but when they do it it’s in the service of a higher purpose, therefore it’s allowed, one has to guess.
Then Saletan goes on to accuse the ABI of having its own agenda, that of weakening drunken-driving regulations and claims that essentially ABI wants people to drive drunk, and they probably hate dogs and children, too. I’m exaggerating — only slightly — but the point is that he takes the position that everything ABI does is evil and everything MADD does is benign and well-intentioned. The irony, of course, is that nothing could be further from the truth.
Saletan argues that “ABI has fought MADD on nearly every alcohol-related issue” and that “ABI doesn’t argue for moderation,” despite the fact that the top of their home page includes the phrase “Drink Responsibly, Drive Responsibly.” His dripping sarcasm would be easier to take without such hypocrisy. He doesn’t seem to acknowledge that there might even be a reason why the ABI might oppose an organization like MADD, whose very being is to undermine every aspect of the alcohol industry. MADD, and other neo-prohibitionist organizations, have been attacking the alcohol industry virtually non-stop since prohibition ended yet Saletan doesn’t seem to believe that the ABI even has the right to defend themselves.
The fact that he refers to the ABI as using “extremism” is almost laughable, especially given his own attempt to smear ABI president Rick Berman by using examples of non-alcohol lobbying and companies. He suggests that while he doesn’t “know enough about MADD’s finances to tell you whether MADD is the best investment of your charitable dollars,” he “can say this: Any organization Berman has vilified is probably worth giving money to.” Saletan ends by stating that “if they’re [other non-profits] pissing off Rick Berman, they must be doing something right.” Well, at least that’s not extremism. Nothing personal there. Just some nice, balanced reporting like any good mainstream news outlet. Present the facts and let the reader decide. Uh-huh.
Saletan conveniently ignores that even MADD found Candy Lightner left the organization she founded several years ago because of their growing extremism.
MADD also ranks poorly with another charitable giving guide. Charity Navigator gives MADD an overall rating of 1 of 4 stars, the lowest level rating reserved only for a charity that “fails to meet industry standards.”
These dismal ratings reveal a shift in MADD’s mission. In the words of its own founder Candy Lightner: MADD “has become far more neo-prohibitionist than I had ever wanted or envisioned … I didn’t start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving.”
No surprises there. Saletan’s screed is typical. He ignores what doesn’t fit his personal world view and rails against everything else. He also states that “ABI is waging PR wars” against MADD and others, while MADD’s own warlike propaganda campaign is not even acknowledged.
Curiously, ABI is pretty much the only alcohol trade group I know of that consistently fights back against MADD and the other anti-alcohol groups. Most try to get along as best they can, a fool’s errand IMHO. It didn’t work for Neville Chamberlain, and I don’t believe appeasement will work in this case, either. So, naturally, ABI has to be vilified. How dare they defend their livelihoods? How dare they defend themselves when attacked? We in the alcohol industry are pure evil, or so it seems every time I read one of these hatchet jobs. But somebody has to shout back. Somebody has to remind these people that the majority of alcohol drinkers do so responsibly and in moderation. Somebody has to point out that there are, in fact, at least two sides to every story. Too bad Slate decided only one side needed to be told.
There’s been a flurry of activity in California’s political power center lately, with a couple of new bills signed by governor Jerry Brown in Sacramento this week.
The Tasting Room Bill makes it easier for breweries to serve samples of their beer without having to comply with all the same requirements as a full-scale restaurant.
From the press release from the CSBA:
Previously, craft brewers wishing to have a tasting room at the brewery would be required to install several industrial sinks, redo plumbing and electrical wiring among other requirements, simply to provide beer samples. These renovations can cost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars creating a huge burden for small breweries.
“This bill will relieve craft brewers from the unnecessary burden of installing restaurant grade equipment that simply isn’t needed to pour a taste of beer,” said Tom McCormick, Executive Director of the California Small Brewers Association. “This is a common sense law that garnered bipartisan support at the Capitol. Yet another example that good beer brings people together.”
The bill, authored by Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, R-San Diego and Assemblyman Wes Chesbro, D-Arcata, passed both the Senate and Assembly floor votes unanimously.
The second bill signed by Governor Brown, SB 39, was authored by Senator Alex Padilla, D-San Fernando Valley, and Assemblyman Jim Beall, R-Santa Clara County, who’s no friend to the beer industry.
Showing just what happens when you don’t pay journalists, the Huffington Post originally reported that passage of Senate Bill 39 meant that caffeine beer was banned, which is not correct. The bill was aimed at alcohol and caffeine energy drinks like Four Loko, Joose and their ilk. The bill only “bans any malt beverage to which caffeine has been directly added as a separate ingredient .” It does not include “beer brewed with coffee, tea or chocolate,” a carve out negotiated by the CSBA.
Here’s a weird consequence of our stunted economy; when the state government in Minnesota shut down July 1, MillerCoors “had 39 ‘brand label registrations’ that expired last month, and the employees who process renewals were laid off when state government shut down July 1 in a budget dispute,” according to an AP story published today online entitled MillerCoors becomes casualty of Minnesota shutdown. Area wholesalers and then retailers could be out of the effected brands in as little as a few days, the story cautions. Hopefully, there’s enough craft beer in the pipeline to satisfy demand and maybe even create a few converts in the process.
My wife’s a political news junkie and reads such arcane fare as Foreign Policy, a magazine covering global politics and economics. She forwarded me Chug for Growth , an article detailing how the beer industry is having a positive effect on economies around the world, especially in emerging nations. Here’s how it begins:
The myth of the smug teetotaler is no joke. Many of the most popular theories of economic growth in wealthy countries, dating back to the Protestant work ethic of Max Weber, emphasize the abstemious and sober virtues of the well-to-do. And from the 18th-century Gin Acts in Britain to Prohibition in 1920s America to a certain class of modern-day economists, there’s a long tradition of blaming intemperance for the persistence of poverty.
But in fact, mounting evidence suggests that beer in particular, and the beer industry that surrounds it, may be as good for growth as excess sobriety. In some of the world’s toughest investment climates, beer companies today are building factories, creating jobs, and providing vital public services, all in the pursuit of new customers for a pint. It’s the brewery as economic stimulus: a formula even a frat boy could love.
The article goes on to detail how beer is good for both the big brewers and the local economies where they’re building or acquiring new breweries. They can add “tax revenue, lease payments, numerous local jobs, and increased demand for local agricultural produce.” And it sells even in the most challenged economies, as “even the poorest of the poor will spend money on alcohol.” I could have done without the lecture on alcohol abuse, while of course ignoring the positive health benefits of moderate consumption, but apart from that it makes a strong case for beer not only being recession-proof, but even a recession-beater in some places.
The article concludes with some interesting speculation about economic growth centuries ago, and whether it, too, may have been caused not, as been previously thought, by the Christian work ethic, but by breweries themselves as is happening today.
Indeed, beer may have been a force for growth for a long time. [Researchers] Colen and Swinnen note that beer consumption is higher in Protestant countries. What if the early success of Protestant-dominated economies wasn’t about Weber’s famed work ethic at all, but about the impact of breweries? Of course, it may be just as outlandish to argue that progress is driven by hops and barley as by the fear of eternal damnation — but at least it’s more fun to discuss over a pint.
I’m all for that.