MillerCoors sues Anheuser-Busch over controversial Bud Light Super Bowl ad
MillerCoors filed a lawsuit Thursday against Anheuser-Busch InBev, claiming that its rival's Bud Light ad shown during the Super Bowl is false advertising meant to deceive customers and misuses the Miller and Coors trademarks.
The company is seeking an injunction to stop Bud Light from continuing the ad campaign. MillerCoors is also asking for a trial by jury and for the defendant to pay its legal fees. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch first reported and posted the lawsuit, which was filed in a Wisconsin federal court.
The lawsuit is the latest retaliation from the U.S. subsidiary of Molson Coors Brewing for the Bud Light campaign that shamed Miller Lite and Coors Light for using corn syrup. Backlash from both the targeted brewer and corn industry growers followed. After the ad aired, MillerCoors said that none of its final products contain the ingredient, which is used during the brewing process.
[I think this is the advertisement. --Ed.
Also at Bloomberg, The Hill, AdAge, and WISN.
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Technically, ice cream follows the laws of thermodynamics, but what would you think of an ice cream that didn't melt on one of the hottest days of the year? Cincinnati station WCPO recently reported on Christie Watson's discovery that her Walmart Great Value ice cream sandwich wouldn't melt even in 80-degree heat. What's that? Ice should melt.
"I thought it was quite weird so I looked at the box and it said no artificial ice cream," Watson said. "So I thought to myself what am I feeding my children?"
Watson couldn't fathom how that could happen so she left out an ice cream sandwich outside again and came out with same results. Then WCPO reporter John Matarese did a test with a Haagen-Daaz ice cream sandwich, a Klondike Bar and the Walmart Great Value sandwich. After 30 minutes in the sun, the Walmart sandwich still resembled a sandwich, the Klondie bar melted some and the Haagen-Daaz was more like a milk puddle. [...] Matarese contacted Walmart and was given the following statement: "Ice cream melts based on the ingredients including cream. Ice cream with more cream (sic) will generally melt at a slower rate, which is the case with our Great Value ice cream sandwiches. In the frozen aisles, Great Value ice cream sandwiches are one of the top sellers, and we are glad to be able to offer a great treat that families love."
Virgina Tech food chemist told the L.A. Times that the less fat the ice cream has, the slower it will melt. Although the Great Value ice cream doesn't quite melt, the ingredients meet all FDA requirements and and have less fat, too. The Great Value ice cream includes corn syrup, guar gum, and cellulose gum, which are common food stabilizers that help keep the sandwich's shape.
The Haagen-Daaz ice cream [ingredients] include cream, milk, sugar, and eggs, and vanilla, "but no corn syrup or gums of any type." This is why it passed the melt test with ease, but not the cost test. It's about $3 more to purchase Haagen-Daaz, Matarese says. But, in this case, melting is included.
It turns out you can hide an entire brewery (or not even have a brewery) and pretend to produce a craft beer, advertise it as such, and it's not even against the law. For years, Blue Moon Brewing Co. has been passing off its beers as "microbrews", or "craft beers", while curiously building market share beyond what a craft brewery could actually produce. The catch is that Blue Moon is semi-secret brand of MillerCoors LLC. CourtHouseNews reports:
Evan Parent, who describes himself as a "beer aficionado," began buying Blue Moon beer in 2011, but stopped in about mid-2012 when he discovered it is made by MillerCoors LLC, which owns widely recognizable labels such as Coors, Miller High Life, Milwaukee's Best and Hamms.
Parent started a class action law suit against MillerCoors in San Diego state court, claiming deceptive practices and misrepresentation in violation of California's Consumers Legal Remedies Act; untrue and misleading advertising in violation of California's false advertising law; and unlawful, fraudulent and unfair business practices in violation of California's unfair competition law.
Under craft-brewing principles [as defined by the Brewers Association], brewers cannot produce more the 6 million barrels of beer annually, must be less than 25 percent owned by a non-craft brewer and must brew beer using only traditional or innovative brewing ingredients. In comparison, MillerCoors makes about 76 million barrels of beer per year, according to Parent who says the company charges "up to 50 percent more for Blue moon" based on its bogus craft-beer status. He also claims the company "goes to great lengths to disassociate Blue Moon beer from the MillerCoors name" by stating on Blue Moon packaging that it is brewed by Blue Moon Brewing Co.
MillerCoors managed to get the case moved to federal court, and the judge handed MillerCoors a slam dunk win on all counts. MillerCoors found specific loopholes in California law that allowed them to produce beer under "fictitious names" if they just register those names on the official "fictitious names" registry. The plaintiff has 30 days to amend the complaint after the judge's final order.
The takeover of SAB Miller by AB InBev has been approved by shareholders (with an increase in the price due to Brexit) and regulators:
Budweiser owner Anheuser-Busch InBev's £79bn takeover of rival SAB Miller is set to go ahead after the shareholders of both firms approved the mega-deal. The deal is expected to be completed on 10 October and will create the world's largest beer firm. Global regulators have already approved the deal, which AB InBev says will create "the first truly global brewer".
The enlarged group - which will produce almost a third of the world's beer - will take the AB InBev name. The deal was agreed last year, but in July AB InBev was forced to raise its offer following a fall in the pound in the wake of the Brexit vote. AB InBev increased its offer by £1 a share to £45 a share. [...] The takeover is expected to boost AB InBev's prospects in developing markets in Africa and China, where a SABMiller joint venture produces Snow, the world's best selling beer by volume.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by canopic jug on Friday March 22 2019, @05:57AM (10 children)
This is going to be a messy fight. They already admit that they use maize products to brew their beer-like fluids. Yet they are suing. I expect the main tactic will be to run up as high legal bills as possible, in particular because they are setting out from the start a demand for the defendant to pay both parties legal costs. Here is a bit from the Bloomberg article:
MillerCoors claims Anheuser-Busch "singled out MillerCoors’ use of a common brewing fermentation aid, corn syrup," ...
If it has got anything other than water, barley, hops, and yeast [wikipedia.org] then it is not beer. That's fine, they can use whatever they want, the just shouldn't try to pass it off as beer.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 22 2019, @06:42AM
If you aren't too picky, here is some THC yeast:
https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-engineer-yeast-to-produce-active-marijuana-compound-thc [sciencealert.com]
I bet we could do carfentanyl, spermine, cadaverine, hydrazine, LSD, and many other fun things.
Does it matter what soil the barley is grown on? I suspect the plant would take up a wide variety of things from soil.
(Score: 5, Informative) by bradley13 on Friday March 22 2019, @07:34AM (5 children)
German beer purity laws are crazy-strict, but this does have a reason, and Miller/Coors/Bud-Light are great examples of what that reason is. They all use corn syrup in the brewing process, because there's otherwise not enough barley to ferment. They are essentially fermented sugar-water that has seen a bit of barley and hops (from a safe distance). According to US regulations:
...a fermented beverage that is brewed from a substitute for malt [ttb.gov]
(such as rice or corn) but without any malted barley may constitute a “beer” under the
IRC but does not fall within the definition of a “malt beverage” under the FAA Act.
Similarly, a fermented beverage that is not brewed with hops may fall within the IRC
definition of “beer” but also falls outside of the definition of a “malt beverage” under the
FAA Act
So what is "beer" then? Well, it is anything containing one-half of 1 percent or more of alcohol by volume, brewed or produced from malt...or from any substitute therefor." [federalregister.gov] The document goes on to list the acceptable substitutes; basically anything including pure sugar: "grain of any kind, bran, glucose, sugar, and molasses".
tl;dr: In the US, beer is essentially an unregulated term for any drink containing a bit of alcohol.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday March 22 2019, @05:16PM (1 child)
I think you've pretty well nailed it. But, don't forget that there will be an upper limit on the alcohol content. Some states restrict alcohol content to ~3.2%, in some lame attempt to reduce drunk driving or some such. Taxes seem to often be based on the alcohol content, with "beer" being lower than wines or spirits. A person could probably waste hours, days, or even weeks trying to thread their way through all of those mazes. I'd rather wander through the maize.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 22 2019, @09:43PM
Ah yes, restrictions on alcohol content, drunk driving, and taxes. Suddenly Runaway knows what he's talking about!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 22 2019, @05:36PM (2 children)
What is very misleading about this is that Miller uses corn in their brewing to lighten the product. Bud also lightens their product, but they use rice. The ad campaign is very misleading because they are implying that they are an all-malt brew when in fact they are not; they are pointing out that they don't use corn syrup, but they don't say anything about using rice or rice syrup. The end product in using barley, corn, rice, etc., is the creation of maltose and glucose (and a few others), which is what the yeast turn into alcohol. If you live in a different part of the world and you are in the midst of an abundance of some other grain, like sorghum, then you make beer out of that (provided you can get the starches to convert to sugars, which barley has an excess of enzymes to do that, so you usually mix your alternate grain with barley).
As a point of note, you can't brew these styles (specifically, the American Light Lager [bjcp.org]) of beer with an all-malt base. You just can't get the light body and flavor that way. There are good historical reasons that North American beers use and used corn and rice, which has to do with the high levels of proteins in the domestic 6-row barley that grows very easy in North America, while in Europe they have lower-protein 2-row barley). The North American barley has plenty of proteins as well as the enzymes to convert the proteins into sugar. If you make an all 6-row barley beer, you can end up with end product issues such as haziness and shelf stability, so what the addition of corn or rice (or even just table sugar) does is to dilute the detrimental effects as well as to lighten the product. The Germans who emigrated to the US in the 19th century learned that pretty quick because they were stuck with figuring out how to use 6-row barley or bite the bullet and purchase more expensive Continental 2-row. Plus, that was also the time that the light lager craze swept the world, so they were economically motivated to brew beer in that style.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday March 22 2019, @07:12PM (1 child)
If you watch the ad -- you'll see a giant barrel labeled "rice" in the Bud Light Castle Basement -- I think that is a good defense against the claim that Bud is claiming to be all-malt.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday March 23 2019, @08:26PM
Is that true? Pretty hilarious if it is.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday March 22 2019, @08:49AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 22 2019, @12:52PM (1 child)
Which wouldn't work on Anheuser-Busch. They can afford massive legal bills too.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday March 22 2019, @05:18PM
Yeah, but those headlines always draw attention. "Company A was ordered to pay Corporation B's legal fees of 6.9 million dollars." It makes it look like Corp B was in the right all along, and Company A was all wrong.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by realDonaldTrump on Friday March 22 2019, @06:53AM (1 child)
MillerCoors looking really really bad here, folks. Very foolish lawsuit because they're saying corn is a bad thing. And it's like that time when my campaign hired a very young intern. Who accidentally retweeted a bad tweet. Saying, "#BenCarson is now leading in the #polls in #Iowa. Too much#Monsanto in the #corn creates issues in the brain?" He, or she apologizes. And MillerCoors, if they're smart, will apologize too.
It's like they're forgetting the Middle of America. I don't forget. I will never forget. And I just took a trip, yesterday, to beautiful Lima, Ohio -- sometimes referred to as The Bean. Where, very proudly, they build Tanks -- one of the only places of its kind in our side of the World, and the only place where they build our M1 Abrams Tank. Very famous tank and you can only buy it in Lima. I'll tell you, they build it there because of one thing -- corn. Corn is critically important to the economy of Lima and Allen County. You can't build a tank without corn. And corn is vital to our Country's national security and military readiness. Absolutely vital.
But corn isn't just a weapon. It goes into basically all our food. Anything with ingredients. For example. I have a can of Diet Coke here. It has Caramel Color -- corn. Aspartame -- corn again. And, Citric Acid -- also corn. All the best ingredients come from corn.
Very tough for those unfortunate "people" that are allergic to corn. Because they miss out on so many wonderful foods. We hear so much about, evolution. Darwin, right? And if that's real, if that's a thing, we won't have those people around for much longer. Sorry!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday March 22 2019, @05:29PM
Lima, Ohio isn't the middle of the country. The Mississippi River is a helluva lot closer to the middle of the country than anything in Ohio. In terms of left/right, Ohio is definitely right-wing, and north/south, Ohio is most definitely Yankee land.
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Friday March 22 2019, @08:54AM (3 children)
Bud Light Commercials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqSWIXb9p4U [youtube.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by hemocyanin on Friday March 22 2019, @03:22PM (1 child)
Here is the specific one:
If you have a youtube account: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkHvj_KEHBk [youtube.com]
if you don't and get the pesky "sign in to confirm your age", the trick is to insert "_popup" before the "?": https://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=LkHvj_KEHBk [youtube.com] -- in many ways it is nicer this way, the video will fill your entire browser window rather than be surrounded by crap and you don't have to choose between an icon size, a slightly larger size, or totally full screen.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Friday March 22 2019, @05:47PM
I watched a half dozen of those commercials, as they came up in the suggestions list. I feel like I've lost an IQ point.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Friday March 22 2019, @03:38PM
Thank you, thats a great Link. And, here's the Link for our very special Short Attention Span folks. The ones that can only watch 1 ad. "We salute you"!! youtu.be/LkHvj_KEHBk [youtu.be]
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday March 22 2019, @03:32PM (5 children)
Paragraph 1: heat is used in the brewing process but none of the final products contain the final ingredient. On the other hand, if corn syrup goes into the wort, the liquid fermentation products of corn syrup remain in the brew.
Paragraph 2: MillerCoors is correct on the corn syrup issue -- I never knew there were two kinds and indeed, there are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_syrup [wikipedia.org] I don't know if it is meaningful but it is an argument, though how they know what everyone knows is a mystery to me. Just because I was ignorant of the distinction doesn't mean all people are. On the other hand, I have a general sense most people share my level of knowledge between corn syrup and HFCS, generally also called corn syrup as far as I can tell.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday March 22 2019, @03:33PM (2 children)
Freakin correction:
Paragraph 1: heat is used in the brewing process but none of the final products contain "heat". On the other hand, if corn syrup goes into the wort, the liquid fermentation products of corn syrup remain in the brew.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Friday March 22 2019, @06:58PM (1 child)
And to take this point one step too far, I'd like to point out that there is heat in beer. Personally, I like it with barely enough heat to remain liquid.
I'll show myself out...
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday March 22 2019, @07:06PM
But not the same heat that was input into the wort.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday March 22 2019, @08:19PM (1 child)
What's somewhat amusing is this is sort of fake news piling on top of other fake news.
Yes, HFCS has been linked to obesity, but so have all forms of sugar, including "normal" corn syrup (which is mostly glucose). The vast majority of supposed HFCS studies are actually fructose studies, and it has been pretty conclusively shown over the years that taking large quantities of fructose by itself does weird things to human metabolism.
On the other hand, HFCS is roughly in line with the composition of sucrose (i.e., table sugar), as sucrose begins to break down even in solution sometimes and definitely by the time it's in your mouth into a 50% fructose/glucose solution, which is roughly the composition of HFCS (in its various incarnations).
Thus, the much smaller number of studies which actually compare HFCS to consumption of other sugars, like sucrose (or honey, which is even closer to HFCS in composition) have generally found much smaller differences for HFCS compared to other common sugars (if any at all).
Bottom line: eating lots of sugar will likely make you fat, whether in the form of HFCS or sucrose or honey or regular corn syrup or barley-based malt syrup or whatever nonsense euphemisms the "natural foods" industries have come up to label their ingredients to pretend it's not sugar.
Or, to translate this into terms even a Hipster could understand: drinking Mexican Coke is not magically healthy, and it's roughly as bad for you as regular Coke with its HFCS.
So here, we basically have a food scare about HFCS caused by misinterpretation of studies on fructose (rather than HFCS), a misunderstanding of how HFCS relates to common sugars (like sucrose and honey), leading consumers to freak out about HFCS. And then we have an additional misunderstanding relating to this beer based on the fact that most consumers also don't realize there's a huge differences between "corn syrup" and HFCS.
I'm not at all being critical of you, because honestly I don't think most of this is consumers' fault. It's the fault of whole industries of scientists and natural foods fanatics peddling misinformation that confuses people and demonizes common ingredients, leading to chemophobia and consumers being triggered by BS terms on packaging -- or, in this case, ads.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 23 2019, @01:54AM
We should spend corn lobby money on education instead. How much could we shrink classroom size, and how many school science labs could we improve just by redirecting that?
Tho "Mexican" coke just tastes better, but not as good as freshly brewed tea.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by realDonaldTrump on Friday March 22 2019, @03:50PM
Using beautiful American corn was very smart. But, they sued in the wrong State. Because Wisconsin, unfortunately, doesn't have a Food Libel Law. Otherwise known as Food Disparagement Law. Some states have them and some don't. Because we left that one up to the states.
If I was in charge of MillerCoors, I would ask my Corporate Lawyers, can we sue in fabulous Golden, Colorado? Where the Food Libel Law is magnificent. And, maybe they looked into that one and they couldn't do it. Too bad!!!!