Congressional Wine Caucus

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The Congressional Wine Caucus includes 250 members of Congress from all 50 US states.[1]. It holds meetings which host ‘tastings’ funded by the alcohol industry [2] and holds high profile fund-raising events for ‘good causes’ unrelated to alcohol, such as The Children’s National Medical Centre [3]. Parallel to this, the function of this caucus is to ‘lobby colleagues on wine-related issues,’[4] which, for example, in 2000 meant pressing governments to allow wine bottles to print labels showing the health benefits of alcohol, and to permit alcohol companies to employ ‘temporary immigrant agriculture workers’, [5] who, we can assume, would work at lower rates of pay and with less job security. (See the Corporate Crimes section, 'Squeezing out Small Businesses'.


Members

References

  1. Congressional Wine Caucus Government & Wine - viewed 15.02.05
  2. Millie Howie, November/December 2001, http://www.practicalwinery.com/novdec01p9.htm 'Keeping Wine on the Congressional Agenda,'] - viewed 15.02.05
  3. Wine America - the National Association of American Wineries, Newsroom - viewed 24.01.05
  4. ' the Crush, April 2002, Congressional Wine Caucus Grows,' - viewed 25.01.05
  5. Atlanta Journal & Constitution, 'Lobbying by wine caucus is vivacious yet earnest,' 23.03.00