Government introduces new beer warning system
After intensive collaboration with The Thirsty Beagle, the U.S. government today unveiled a new warning system intended to save honest beer connoisseurs from making an incorrect choice when it comes to their beer selection. The program, which calls for labels to be placed on each can or bottle of beer served in America, and for bartenders to disclose the threat level of certain beers, is expected to go into place Jan. 1, 2010.
The Thirsty Beagle, who was tapped by the government a year ago to help develop the program, said he is pleased with the new system.
“People who are used to drinking some watered-down, no-good beer may not know what they’re missing by choosing a beer that may fall on the danger end of the warning system,” he said. “This new set of labels will make it clear which beers to enjoy and which to avoid with a 10-foot pole.”
A government official from the U.S. Department of Consumer, Industrial and Foodstuff Satisfaction said The Thirsty Beagle’s expertise in developing the warning label system was invaluable.
“Quite frankly,” the official said, “a lot of people in America drink irredeemable beer. We hope this new system will take the country on a track to more thorough beer enjoyment.”
The new warning label system will look like this:
So how does the system work? Suppose you’re about to open a can of Natural Light, you would notice a red, or Severe Risk of Terrible Beer, label on the can. Maybe you were going to crack open a Chimay Red; that bottle would have a green, or Low Risk of Terrible Beer, label on it. All beers would fall somewhere in the five-color range.
Some beer industry insiders have balked at the new system.
“You don’t see warning labels on orange juice or a loaf of bread,” one insider said. “Surely some orange juice is not as good as some other orange juice, but you don’t see the inferior orange juice being singled out.”
The government official responded by saying that comparisons to the orange juice industry are not warranted, mainly because no one really cares about orange juice comparisons.
“To argue that the government has no responsibility to safeguard the beer-drinking public’s interest when it comes to the quality of beer they drink, that’s just foolhardy,” he said. “Inferior beers of the world need to be unmasked for what they really are.”
The next step in the program will be an intensive project by The Thirsty Beagle to assign correct colors to each of the world’s beers. A series of tastings will be carried out nearly around the clock to bring the labeling system online before the Jan. 1 deadline.
“It’s a tough job,” The Thirsty Beagle said, “but somebody’s got to do it. And that somebody is me.”
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Comments
Hello,
I like a lot of your blog, I’am a lover of natural products, I must congratulate you for your post.
Very good work
Alberto
There are websites out there that grade beers on quality, smoothness, etc. I’m wondering if a label to that effect is a good idea. I can’t think of any other consumable out there that does this. Surely it would cause at least a third of these “lower-class” companies to fold. That would mean a lot of jobs lost. A good portion of these lower-class beers are here in America (as opposed to imported beer). Can America handle the loss of that many jobs? Maybe, but If I were the gov’t, I wouldn’t want that kind of gamble in my hands.
Beside buying a beer that that fails the taste-bud test is a painful but valuable lesson, and a label just can’t make up for that. I’ll never forget buying and drinking a honey brew by some patriot sounding beer. I wish I hadn’t got the wretched stuff, but I learned a valuable lesson: You can’t judge a beer by its label. A few years later I learned that the best beers are usually imports, and that the darker they are, the better they are–with a few exceptions.
I hope this is something like an Onion article because I hope our government isn’t messing around with legislation like this when our survival as a country could be at stake. Beside mixing alcohol and politics is never a good idea.