BREWERS' GUARDIAN: Brewer attacks 'anti-beer lies'

Brewer attacks 'anti-beer lies'
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Rob Brown on 02 February, 2010 03:29:00
 
The Russian government is engaged in a campaign of propaganda and lies against
the brewing industry, according to a senior source in the country’s biggest
beer-maker, Baltika.
As the Russian government prepared to impose a crippling 300% take rise on beer
last month, the country’s brewers were accused of routinely pepping up weak
beer with ethanol and adding female hormones to their products.
“A wide anti-beer campaign has been launched in the public media where beer
is said to lead to the most severe forms of alcoholism, focus on young consumers
in order to destroy the nation and even contain female hormones that eventually
turn you into a woman,” said the source.
Brewers are bound by tight restrictions on advertising and marketing their
products in Russia and even harsher rules aimed at outlawing beer sales
after-dark and from road-side kiosks are under consideration. While beer duty
was tripled on January 1st, duties on vodka were upped by 10%.
In December government chief narcologist Evgeny Bryun launched a searing attack
on the country’s brewers, claiming: “Pure alcohol is added practically
everywhere, since sped-up brewing technology is used everywhere. Fermentation is
halted using pure alcohol.”
A libel suit later brought by the Union of Russia Brewers (URB) was
unsuccessful. In a statement the URB said: “The statements of the country’s
chief substance abuse expert lend support to a number of myths that are either
at the limit of common sense or well beyond it.”
Calls for a public refutation from Bryun have so far gone unanswered. The
source at Baltika said the “propaganda” and tax hike will “flatten many
breweries in the coming years and make hundreds unemployed”.