Diageo has announced plans to supply serving facts information on its alcohol beverage products and voluntarily provide consumers with additional caloric and nutritional information.
After years of asking the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) for permission to label its beer, wine and spirits products with serving facts information, Diageo finally convinced the TTB to temporarily approve the request in 2013.
Diageo has now received final approval from the TTB to include a serving facts panel on its labels. Previously, alcohol manufacturers in the U.S. were not allowed to list serving facts on their packaging.
“The consumer is at the heart of everything we do, and making serving facts information available to people in an easy to understand format is what, according to our research and polling, today’s consumers want,” Peter McDonough, the company’s president of marketing innovation said in a press statement. “As a company that prides itself in promoting responsible consumption, we believe this information will help consumers make informed and responsible decisions about drinking.”
Diageo said it has supplied serving facts information for its products via the DRINKiQ website since 2006. Now, however, the company plans to also update its packaging to reflect serving facts information labels.
“This is the culmination of years of hard work by Diageo, as well as the more than 70 consumer and public health groups that stood with us in support of labeling in 2003,” Guy Smith, Diageo’s North American vice president said in a statement. “It is important to note that including this information is voluntary, so producers have the option to include this information, or not. We specifically commend the National Consumers League and the Center for Science in the Public Interest who supported this important initiative from the beginning. And we are grateful to the TTB who are now allowing the industry to give consumers the information they have been asking for.”
Serving facts information will begin appearing on Diego’s U.S. labels in the coming months, the company told Brewbound. The company also said it does not plan to create any new marketing campaigns focused on the new labels or serving facts information at this time.
A full press release with additional information can be found on Brewbound’s sister publication, BevNET.