4

Food Manufacturers Keep Suing Over The Exact Definition Of Foods

Soy milk, almond milk, and other non-moo-cow milks have been cutting into the market share of American dairy farmers, despite the fact that they taste like the water that was just used to wash a chalk board. The latest volley in this nearly 20-year-old war is the Dairy Pride Act, which if passed would require the FDA to enforce its standards so only milk from the "lacteal secretion of hooved mammals" could be identified as milk on the label. It sounds kinda gross when put like that, but the dairy industry spends nearly $6.5 million a year on such lobbying efforts to force the products to be named "Almond Water" or something. The non-milk milk industry's counter-argument is that consumers are smart enough to know that almonds and cow are different, and if you really think about it, what is milk, anyway? Maybe we're all just drops of milk in an almond called the Universe.

Not every dairy producer is fortunate enough to be on the offensive in the Labeling Wars. Kraft Foods had to deal with the embarrassment of their Kraft Singles being slapped with censures from the FDA for having the gall to call the used tires they've shaved and dyed orange "cheese." Since it isn't made from at least 51 percent real dairy, it's official labeled "Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Product," though it's not clear if those three additional useless words have ever stopped a single person from buying it.

Savany/iStock

Pringles has also come under scrutiny. When they were first released in the 1970s, other chip companies spent years arguing that Pringles were not real chips, since they're only made with about 40 percent potatoes (the other 60 percent is a paste of corn, rice, and wheat flours, plus other things like Dextrose, which we believe was also a G.I. Joe villain). The FDA agreed, and ordered Pringles to be labeled as "Potato chips made from dried potatoes." Pringles instead changed their snack to a "potato crisp," which both sounds more appetizing and could maybe trick some British tourists.

OK, but even if we don't understand what exactly our food is called, we can still trust all those health labels on them, right? Aw, you're adorable. In 2015, the controversial Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics awarded Kraft Singles a "Kids Eat Right" label, only for it to be removed by the end of the month amidst criticism that the AND is too close to food companies. Meanwhile, Campbell's has been sued twice in the last five years for not disclosing to the FDA that it paid the American Heart Association for endorsements of its soup. A can of Campbell's can have over six times the recommended amount of sodium for such a product, and contains harmful trans-fat inconsistent with a "Heart Healthy" label, but would be perfect for a label where a heart is sickly, struggling, and clearly ready to die.

Campbell's

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Companies Keep Redefining Their Products To Avoid Tariffs

The idea behind tariffs is to protect domestic industries by keeping them competitive against foreign goods. So, for example, a shirt made in China is going to cost you a little more than a shirt made in the USA. But because many definitions are artificial and vaguely defined under the law ("This isn't a shirt, it's a blouse for men!"), the situation can get goofy in a hurry.

For example, the creators of the Snuggie won the right for their product to be defined as a blanket, not a piece of clothing, so they'd only have to pay an 8.5 percent tax instead of 15 percent. Pillow Pets won a similar fight, and are now allowed to be classified as stuffed animals, because pillows are subject to tariffs, while toys are not.

Pillow Pets

Back in the '60s, in response to a chicken tariff in Europe (don't ask), President Johnson instituted a 25 percent tariff on "light trucks" (like the popular Volkswagen Van that hippies rode around in at the time, because in the legal world vans count as trucks), to the detriment of Ford once they started production of such a van in Turkey in 2002. Their response? Ford Transit Connects were shipped over with extra seats installed to make it a "passenger van" -- which, once through customs, were quickly removed and recycled so the back half of the vehicle could be reassembled and the car could be magically transformed into a "cargo van." The government finally cracked down on Ford's chicanery ... in 2013.

Subaru pulled a similar trick in the '70s and '80s with their BRAT coupes, installing cheap seats and shoddy seat belts in the cargo bed so they could call it a passenger vehicle and be subject to a paltry 2.5 percent tariff instead of that brutal 25 percent charge. Because the world is fine with fluid definitions as long as profit is involved.

Subaru

2

America Takes Advantage Of A Century-Old Treaty To Sell Knockoff Champagne

You've probably heard that champagne is only really champagne if it comes from the Champagne region of France, kind of like how true Kobe beef only comes from Kobe, Japan, and how only one specific industrial waste management plant in East St. Louis is allowed to manufacture Necco Wafers. Champagne's champagne became associated with royalty and obtained a reputation for being the best damn booze around, and for centuries France took legal steps to ensure that their branding was protected. The rest of the world mostly complies. Italy's equivalent to champagne is Prosecco, Spain has Cava, Canadians pour Labatt into a flute glass, and so on. But the United States continues to let manufacturers cram anything short of antifreeze into a bottle and call it champagne, because this is the land of the free, goddammit, and that includes the freedom to pop open the screw top on an eight-dollar bottle of fine North Dakotan champagne to celebrate getting through another Tuesday.

Victorgrigas/Wiki Commons

1

A Whole Lot Of Secret Interests Are Keeping You From Buying Beer

Everyone pretty much agrees alcohol shouldn't be sold to children (bars would become unbearable), but ideally that'd be about it as far as legal restrictions go. Well, if you've tried to buy booze in the USA, you know that nobody gives a shit about you or what you consider ideal. Restrictions on buying alcohol on Sundays are relatively common, and there are hundreds of "dry" counties in America which still ban the sale of alcohol altogether. But then there are other interest groups controlling how you buy hooch, and it has nothing to do with their concern for your soul or liver.

One set of combatants fighting over the right to get you drunk are liquor stores and grocery stores, since several states have laws saying what can and can't be sold at each. Restrictions on beer sales date back to the end of Prohibition, when the alcohol by volume ceiling was updated from 0.5 percent to 3.2 percent. Despite subsequent changes, grocery and convenience stores in states like Minnesota and Kansas are still only allowed to sell alcohol below 3.2 percent (for reference, Bud Light's vaguely beer-flavored water has an ABV of 4.2 percent), while liquor stores have free reign. Other states' liquor stores, like those in Indiana and Oklahoma, upped the ante by lobbying to keep convenience and grocery stores from selling cold beer, based on the unconvincing idea that selling cold beer requires an entirely different set of regulatory standards than warm beer.

Scott Olsen/Getty Images

Meanwhile, the people who make the beer are having their own problems getting it to you. The rise of the craft beer industry has created hundreds of new beers to sample, but distributors (the middlemen between breweries and retailers) have lobbied to protect their profits. Instead of trusting breweries to distribute, North Carolina law requires any brewery making more than 25,000 barrels a year to use an independent distributor (which, in a total coincidence, are starting to be purchased by big manufacturers like Anheuser-Busch). So craft breweries have to either give up a chunk of their profits or artificially limit how much beer they make.

If you enjoy having options beyond Budweiser, Coors, and the harsh light of sobriety, these regulations make a difference. Mississippi and Georgia breweries have been forced to implement tour systems, which charge visitors for a tour while offering up to 30 oz. of "free" beer, regardless of whether the customer takes the tour. You can't just buy beer to take home, nor can you buy a more expensive "tour" in relation to the amount of beer you want. Georgia lawmakers have had over half a million in campaign contributions from distributors, and as a result, Georgia has the 48th fewest breweries in the country, while Mississippi ranks dead last. That's enough to make someone want to get into meth.

James has a Twitter, and has recently tried his hand at blogging.

For more looks at corporate operations you'll wish you didn't know, check out The 5 Most Purely Evil Leaked Memos From Famous Companies and 16 Diabolical Acts of Evil by Famous Corporations.

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