Filed in archive Wine News by Carol Bancroft on August 6, 2007

It seems as if everyone is obsessed with nutrition these days, and many people are "label readers" - checking each item's wrapper for the number of calories, grams of fat, and so on. U.S. President George W. Bush wants to extend labelling laws even further and slap them on bottles of wine, beer, and other alcoholic beverages. If the proposal goes through, bottles of wine will carry labels similar to those found on other food labels and would list calories, fat, protein and carbohydrates in addition to percentage of alcohol. Not surprisingly, many in the industry are unhappy about this.

From The Sacramento Bee:

Mark Chandler, executive director of the Lodi Woodbridge Winegrape Commission, said nutrition labels would be "unnecessary and redundant" and might force winemakers to "reconfigure" the size of their labels.

"I think the American consumer is already pretty well informed about nutrition and these issues," Chandler said.

The proposal, open for public comment through October, would give the industry three years to phase in the new labels. Treasury officials say this would reduce transition costs...

The latest proposal represents an about-face for the Treasury Department. In 1993, following earlier study, the agency concluded that "there was no significant consumer interest" in having nutrition information on alcohol.

Related Entries:

New Wine Laws in UK - 05 June 2007
DIY Wine Lands Store Owner In Hot Water - 09 July 2007
The Art of Wine - 11 July 2007
Apparently, Labels Do Matter - 10 August 2007
Understanding Old World Wine Labels - 01 March 2008
Wine Origins: Truth in Wine Labeling - 17 April 2008

« Great South African Cheni... | Main | Virgina Produces Ice Wine »

Permalink: US Gov't Wants Nutrition Labels On Wine

Tags: wine labeling laws wines labels nutrition+labels labels+wine wants+nutrition

Trackback: http://publish.creative-weblogging.com/publish/mt-tb.pl/84733

Addthis

Ask

Blinklist

del.icio.us

Digg

Fark

Facebook

Google

Lycos

Ma.gnolia

Mr Wong

Netscape

Netvousz

Newsvine

StumbleUpon

Slashdot

Tailrank

Technorati

Wink

Yahoo

Vote for US Gov't Wants Nutrition Labels On Wine:

Currently 7.00/10
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

Rating: 7.00 out of 4 vote(s) cast.

Response from: Stacy (08/09/07 10:22am)

Seriously? I'm not sure that I ever even considered the nutritional aspects of drinking wine. Let's not confuse alcohol consumption with good health. A glass of red wine each day help us in many ways, but to junk up a wineries beautiful bottles with carb counts? Please don't.

Response from: Bob Skilnik (10/18/08 11:33am)

This has nothing to do with what George Bush wants. The push for the labeling of aloholic beverages has been building since 1972 and aggressively pushed by advocacy groups such as The National Consumers League (NCL) and The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).

Why stick politics into a long and involved issue that has transcended years of different administrations and political parties?