CALF_News_April_May_2019

38 CALF News • April | May 2019 • www.calfnews.net By Blaine Davis Contributing Editor Beyond the Ranch Gate Know What's on the Label or Behind It W ith a near weekly snow storm since Christmas, western Kansas has seemed more like Min- nesota or even our foreign neighbor further north. Now, with snow totals approaching 3 feet, my steel steed has been idle behind the “ranch gate.” Without my usual road time, my interests have fallen to reading everything from my mail boxes, both postal and electronic, to pacing the floor from window to another, searching for blue skies and sunshine. Further exasperating my cabin fever has been hours of intelligence-insulting television programming. Interrupting this scheduled “insanity” was even more inane offer- ings of national advertising campaigns for some of America’s best-known products. Not only were these insulting to my intel- ligence, but several drove daggers into the heart of American agriculture. In the midst of my hiatus from the usual road adventures was Super Bowl LXXX. Agreeing with Greg Henderson, editor of Drovers magazine in a column,“Tailgate Talk,” in the mid-Feb- ruary issue of Farm Journal ,“it was a yawner between the third and fourth best teams.” Interrupting the boredom of this game was Anheuser-Busch Companies’ launch of a new promotion, “Know what’s in your beer.” Bud Light’s four ingredients are hops, barley, rice and water, but no added corn syrup. But they fail to mention it’s not the often-maligned high fructose corn syrup. Corn syrup made from the starch of corn is used in hundreds of foods, including candy and Bud Light’s competitors, Miller Lite and Coors Light. These ads go on to admonish them by portraying the delivery of a large wooden barrel of corn syrup to a medieval castle, aka the Bud Light brewery, with a response,“It’s not ours, we don’t use it, must belong to one of the other two.” Being an amateur winemaker and often lamenting that I should have paid more attention in high school chemistry class, even I know enough that sugars from barley and rice, in the case of Bud Light, or added corn syrup must be present to feed the yeast for conversion to alcohol. Whether it is in the production of bourbon, beer or wine, the completion of the fermentation process uses all the sugar available and leaves no remnants in the final product. Both Miller and Coors acknowledge their use of corn syrup and attribute its contribution to the fermentation process to a better taste profile. Being neighbors in the same city of St. Louis, Mo., Anheuser-Busch Companies, owned by a Belgium- based company since 2008, might have removed their corporate wooden clogs from their mouths and tapped the National Corn Growers Association for more relevant information about corn syrup. In denigrating this product of America’s farmers, Greg Henderson adds,“This might be the greatest marketing sleight- The new Bud Light packaging confusingly appears as if it is a health food beverage, with no mention of being an alcoholic drink. Good to know it is free of corn syrup, preservatives and artificial flavors. of-hand in history.”The maker of a known carcinogen (alcohol) is throwing corn syrup under the proverbial bus? Further channel surfing, I spy yet other intelligence-insulting commercial throwing more daggers at American agriculture. Hollywood celebrities Ted Danson and Jenna Fischer tout Smirnoff ’s No. 21 vodka as now made with non-GMO grain. These spokespersons imply that the product produced with non-GMO grain is healthier, safer and more environmentally friendly. In reality, vodka is vodka, whether it’s from genetically modified organisms (GMO) or non-GMO grain. GMOs are the byproduct of American ingenuity in the agri- cultural industry. Decades of proof and over 100 government- funded studies have proven that GMOs are safe, if not safer than, conventionally bred crops. Smirnoff ’s vodka, like most other brands and types of libations, can be found in retail liquor stores throughout America, except in Hoxie, Kan. A&C Liquid Assets, owned by Allison and Cole Nondorf, a Sheridan County farm couple, supplements their balance sheet from a cattle, corn, grain sorghum, soybean and wheat operation with a wine and spirits business. Much as I was taken aback by the clueless insinuations of this Smirnoff commercial, the Nondorfs had had enough, too. Two days after he viewed the same ad, the Nondorfs swept all of Smirnoff products from their shelves, replacing them with Kansas vodka distilled from Kansas-grown, GMO grain. “I’m not ok with being brand-bullied into carrying something that is a lie. For once, we could just say no,” Allison said. Continued on page 41 