Session #13 – Organic Beer, by Ron

This edition of The Session is sponsored by Chris O’Brien’s, The Beer Activist. (I just love his tag line, “Drink Beer. Save the World.”) Session #13 is titled Organic Beer

Here’s a bit of context to help inspire your observations on organic imbibing. “Organic beer” refers to beers that use ingredients, supplies, and production processes that have been certified as adhering to the rules of the National Organic Program administered by the US Department of Agriculture (and similar programs in other countries).

I was going to cheap out on this session and just refer to my review of Orlio beers by Magic Hat, but I thought it might be interesting to point out some stuff about Anheuser-Busch and how they are genetically engineering rice to be used in their beers. Now, I’m just guessing here, but I doubt GE rice is considered organic.

Greenpeace made this disgusting YouTube video to let you know. Disgusting, but that’s the point, and it is kind of funny…

All of the articles I have found are about why isn’t Anheuser-Busch pointing this out. I think it is pretty obvious… they don’t have to and it would wreck their advertising of “all-natural”. The question is, can they still advertise as all-natural?

Resources:
Anheuser Busch Using Genetically Engineered Rice in Beer: Greenpeace
Anheuser-Busch Pledges to Use Only Organic Hops In Organic Beer
Anheuser-Busch using experimental genetically-engineered (GE) rice to brew Budweiser
Greenpeace: Genetically altered rice in Budweiser
Budweiser Found to Contain Genetically Engineered Rice

Update: Session #13 Roundup