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News From Around The World! Dateline Belgium, where their customs enforcement squad has destroyed a shipment of American beer because they are very touchy about the word "Champagne" over there, and Miller High Life calling itself  “The Champagne of Beers” is just unacceptable.

So, claiming that the beer cans improperly claimed to be full of Champagne, Belgians crushed the plans of 2,352 of them (98 cases, I did the math!) to bring happiness to consumers.

Oh, the humanity.

The trade association for the Champagne industry is whining that the "C" word can only be on bottles of bubbly sparkling wine, and only on fizzy grape juice made by a traditional method in Champagne, France.

If you want to call your pétillant wine "Champagne," you have to make it out of  Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Meunier grapes.

And so, the Comité Champagne, the Champagne trade association, requested that the Belgian government destroy perfectly good beer (well, Miller, but still...) because calling any beer “The Champagne of Beers” is a doggone infringement on their band name.

Miller High Life has been calling themselves by that moniker since 1969. Before that, they called their product "The Champagne Of Bottled Beer" from 1906 on. 

The Belgian authorities were quick to point out that the beer, which was confiscated at the port of Antwerp in February, was smashed “with the greatest respect for environmental concerns by ensuring that the entire batch, content and container, is recycled in an eco-responsible way.”

If you are daft enough to think that beer is champagne, you would probably also think that paintings of dogs playing cards is great art, the novels of John Grisham are great literature, and a Filet-O-Fish is fine seafood dining.

But at least, the Belgians are not waffling on this.