Alcohol
C. Jarrett Dieterle | 8.24.2024 7:00 AM
The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) is considering new rules for alcohol labeling, including a mandate to display nutritional information and ingredients on booze bottles and cans. Some people are heralding this as a common-sense transparency reform. In fact, it's another combat theater in the government's war against alcohol.
In 2022, the TTB issued its "Competition in Markets for Beer, Wine, and Spirits" report, which recommended that the agency consider a new mandate to print nutritional information, ingredients, and food allergens on alcohol product labels. (Alcohol is not currently subject to nutritional and ingredient labeling mandates, since it falls within the ambit of the TTB rather than the Food and Drug Administration.) To judge from recent listening sessions hosted by the TTB (and some rumblings in the industry), the agency appears to be leaning toward taking the report's advice.
Groups like the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Consumer Federation of America have been........