Dive Brief:
- Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors, acting separately, posted the ingredients of some of their most popular beers online yesterday. Both companies promised more disclosures in upcoming days.
- Anheuser-Busch revealed the ingredients for Budweiser and Bud Light. MillerCoors disclosed what's inside eight of its brews, including Miller Lite and Coors Light.
- Noted food blogger Vani Hari, who goes under the name "the Food Babe" has led an online campaign to force the disclosures. Hari is the same blogger who revealed the "yoga mat" ingredient in the breads at Subway.
Dive Insight:
It seems that Ms. Hari has turned into some sort of one-person combination of Consumer Reports magazine, Miss Marple, the FDA, and Sofia Vergara.
The obvious lesson here for food and beverage companies is that there's no place to hide in the era of the e-vangelist. But there's also a lesson here for regulators.The reason that beer companies haven't been required to list ingredients all these years is because beer is regulated by the Treasury department, not the FDA. But at this point it should be clear that the social-media savvy activists simply have no tolerance for legalese or regulatory turf wars.