Responding to calls by prevention and public-health groups, the U.S. Treasury Department's Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) is proposing new rules that would require a variety of content information to be posted on the labels of alcoholic beverages, including alcohol content, serving size, and nutritional information.

"TTB believes that the alcohol content of a beverage is one of the most important pieces of information about that product," the agency stated. "We agree with those commenters who stated that labels should provide the consumers with this very basic information. We also believe that consumers use information about alcohol content to measure and moderate their drinking."

The "Serving Facts" box would feature such information as caloric content, carbohydrates, fat, and protein. The announcement of the proposed rule comes four years after a variety of groups, including the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), the National Consumer League (NCL), and the liquor company Diageo signed onto a petition calling for the TTB to address the issue of alcohol labeling.

"Consumers want more information -- not less," said Guy L. Smith, Diageo's executive vice president. "Today marks a major victory for consumers and a win for our industry. We are one step closer to providing consumers the information our research tells us they overwhelmingly want about carbs, calories, alcohol content and alcohol per serving size."

"This is the year 2007, and [the information] ought to be on there," added Smith in an Associated Press interview. "Our industry has not changed as quickly as it probably should have."

A CSPI survey found that 58 percent of consumers don't know the caloric content of beer or underestimate it, and that 89 percent support adding caloric information on alcoholic beverages.

"Existing labeling rules are inconsistent, confusing, and don't help consumers compare beverages' alcohol or calorie content," said NCL President Linda Golodner. "While wine and hard liquor list alcohol content, beer doesn't. And while 'light' beer and low-alcohol wines list calories, regular beer, wine, and hard liquor don't."

"It seems silly that a bottle of lemonade has to list its ingredients, but a bottle of hard lemonade doesn't," added George Hacker, director of CSPI's Alcohol Policies Project. "Consumers who are trying to maintain a healthful weight have very little information about how many calories alcoholic beverages are contributing to their diet. Given America's concern over the epidemic of overweight and obesity, it makes no sense that such a significant source of calories goes undisclosed on labels."

The beer industry, however, objected to the proposed rules, telling the TTB: "The alcohol content of most beer is in a very narrow range, and consumers are generally aware of that fact."

The 2003 petition said that the rules would "help consumers make more informed choices about their consumption of alcohol and help protect those Americans who can suffer serious, sometimes fatal, reactions to the myriad of additives or allergens that may be used in beer, wine, and liquor. Such information would also help consumers adhere to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans' recommendations regarding consumption of alcohol and maintenance of a healthy weight. 

"In addition, such labeling would help reduce consumer confusion about the different types of alcoholic beverages and the amount/concentration of alcohol in each," the petition noted. "Wines, beers, and distilled spirits are sold in an increasingly wide variety of formulations, container sizes and alcohol concentrations. Providing per-serving label information about alcohol and calories, as well as the number of drinks per container, would allow consumers to quickly and easily determine the alcohol content and other important characteristics of a particular product."

Comments on the proposed rule are due Oct. 29; the rule would become mandatory three years after it is approved. That represents a potential defeat for the beer industry, which has called for the labeling requirements to be voluntary.

The TTB received more than 19,000 comments when it posted an advance notice of proposed rulemaking, many generated by a letter-writing campaign organized by Diageo. CSPI and others are urging concerned groups and individuals to weigh in on the latest proposed rule.

In 1993, the TTB's predecessor, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, ruled that there was no significant consumer interest in nutritional labels for alcoholic beverages.