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THE INCREASE IN demand for cans of Guinness as a result of the closure of bars amid the pandemic has led to a shortage of floating widgets.
Diageo said it reverted to a fixed widget system for some of its packs, reducing the can size to 470mls instead of 500mls, as a temporary measure.
The floating widget is used to manage the head when pouring a pint of the black stuff, with Diageo stating that the fixed widget still creates the famous creamy head.
However a number of callers to RTÉ’s Liveline yesterday disagreed, assuming the cans they bought must have been “duds”.
One listener, Peter, said he had a mixture of cans and noticed the difference in the floating and fixed widget straight away.
“I actually had a mixture of cans. I was after purchasing one can from one shop and another can from another shop and they were kind of mixed and I noticed the difference in size then and no widget,” he told Joe.
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“Had I known there was no widget in it, no matter what price the Guinness was, I wouldn’t have bought it.”
Another man, Dave, then called into the programme to voice his disappointment:
“I didn’t realise till I opened them they were the small cans. And they poured very, very badly, like Guinness with a kind of a small Ian Paisley collar, a tiny collar, you know?”
Dave said he called up Diageo to get to the bottom of his predicament who told him that due to Covid a lot of their stout was being canned in Belfast.
In a statement to TheJournal.ie, a Diageo spokesperson said: “As a result of Covid-19 and closure of bars, we have experienced an increase in consumer demand from the retail trade which has led to a shortage of floating widgets.”
As a temporary measure and to ensure supply of Guinness Draught in a can across Ireland, we reverted to a fixed widget system for just some of our packs. The magic of the fixed widget is that, like the floating widget, it is the secret to creating that famous creamy head. The can with the fixed widget is slightly smaller at 470mls but it contains exactly the same great tasting Guinness brewed at St James’s Gate.
Earlier today, Guinness launched a new alcohol-free version of its famed stout after a four-year endeavour to replicate the taste of the original black stuff.
The Irish brewer says Guinness 0.0 is a response to a growing consumer appetite for non-alcohol, lower-calorie drinks. The product was developed by an innovation team based at Guinness’s brewery at St James’s Gate in Dublin.
A global launch of the product is pencilled in for next summer.
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Folks need to get a grip, the lambs weren’t complaining at all. In fact I watched it again just to double check and all I could hear was the silence of the lambs
I have a life and it is thankfully longer than any lamb’s. It might be a great invention but the studio environment would be frightening to this poor creatures not to mention having to look at Tubrity!
The outrage and upset among anybody who is not emotionally hardened was clearly caused by seeing a sweet baby lamb being put into a situation where it was clearly terrified (as witnessed by the rapid breathing and eye rolling). Farmers say the lamb was grand, but these are the people that take similarly young baby lambs, hold them down and castrate them without an anaesthetic (why waste money on a ‘product’) in what vets describe as an agonising experience for the animal. The reason for the upset I think is that it brought people face to face with the suffering and pain inflicted on the animals they eat and the fact that they are beautiful but will only live a short baby life because they have no right to a life of any kind – they are just seen as lumps of meat.
@paddy o’brian – Tubs is self employed – on contract – so P45 is N/A. Maybe spend a day on a farm when lambs are being ragged & then u might approve of this device.
The attempts at wit getting posted on this here subject is beyond pathetic….hang on to the day jobs Joe and Josephine because comedy is actually supposed to be funny. like
I eat Lamb maybe twice a yr. Its really nice & the best of meat. When trying to tag a lamb I’m sure a good few lambs ears are partly chopped off – so maybe this invention will prevent such accidents.
@Reg. I hope you enjoy your Shepard’s (sic) pie when you get home. I am an inveterate eater of meat – I know that meat comes from animals. However, I would prefer that there was the minimum amount of pissing them about and torturing them prior to them becoming my food. Wild, illogical, wacky, crazy? Maybe so. They nourish us – they deserve some small respect for that.
Ever heard of food traceability? That’s where tagging comes in. All animals must be tagged, & anything that makes that easier/less stressful for the farmer & the animal must be a good thing, surely? The animal was probably more scared at being in a brightly lit studio, faced with a crowd of people! It’s never going to be a totally painless procedure for the animal, unfortunately, so it becomes a matter of minimising it as much as possible.
Anyone who eats meat should really familiarise themselves with the “production” process.
It’d be interesting to know how many of those who lodged complaints are meat eaters.
I know Reg – it was interesting from that point of view – the clear fear of the lamb is just the tip of the iceberg compared to what happens to these creatures away from the camera – people do not want to be reminded that the raising of meat for them necessarily causes pain and suffering and the lack of any kind of real right to a decent life for these babies who never even make it out of babyhood. For pigs of course (reckoned to be like dogs in intelligence and character) the life is way more cruel – kept indoors in the dark in crowded, unnatural surroundings their whole lives. I do not eat meat.
Absolutely agree. Animals of every kind deserve our respect. We seem to forget that animals that nourish us also are living, breathing creatures who have feelings and emotions.
lambs do make it out of baby hood! your lack of sense and pure stupidity makes me want to cry!sheep are grown up lambs.how else do we get them?a magical fairy on a unicorn make them magicly apear? ya right
I want to make an official complaint about the number of complaints being received by the Rte. It seems that complaining has become a fashionable thing. So many upset or offended people out there who are out of touch.
Perhaps they should – we know from undercover filming that the deaths are not the nice gentle thing people like to fool themselves that they are… that might put a few people off their baby lamb dinner.
These people are complaining about something that they don’t understand. Putting a tag on a lamb is required by EU law for identification and reporting purposes. Thousands of lambs are tagged every day in Ireland. This contraption simply makes it easier for the farmer and probably less stressful for the animal. Is it not okay to show farming practices on Irish TV anymore?
I think it is clear if you have any kind of empathy that this was a sentient being in distress – what is not to understand? Do you think that thing will only be used for tagging – and not tail docking or other agonising common practices such as castration of baby lambs without anaesthetic? What people DO understand is that animals are treated as commodities in our meat production machine and that they suffer pain and anguish as part of the whole process. That makes for cognitive dissonance if, on the one hand, you eat meat and, on the other, you like to think of yourself as a person who is not cruel or unkind.
I’ve just watched this now and I noticed the lambs head wasn’t restrained and yet it didn’t throw its head about at all. To me it didn’t look like like he was distressed in any way.
Not half as bad as some other places. Richard Hammond done a programme on BBC a few years back and they found that some of the doner meat over in London had been washed down with bleach to stop the smell of it rotting……
Indeed they do. People are fooling themselves that it’s all sweet and lovely down on the farm so that they can eat the meat with a good conscience. This show was just a hint of what these baby animals will suffer in their brief lives. Farmers don’t waste money on anaesthetics when they ‘tag’ an ear, or castrate a baby lamb, and their deaths at such a tender age are very likely not the pain-free gentle event that people who eat them might like to think.
I can assure you the lamb was a lot more relaxed and settled that lambs I’ve watched having ear tags fitted and their tails docked. The struggle when attempting to complete these tasks causes a lot more stress than the actual task. Honestly if people find this device upsetting then they should quit eating ALL meat because there’s far worse happens over the life of your chops n steaks
Indeed there is – like agonising castration of baby lambs without anaesthetic – why would you waste anaesthetic on a sentient being you perceive to be no more than a product that you will send to be killed while it is still a baby?
Fair enough then. Let us ponder for a moment what will happen to all those who are telling us to “grow up” about the methods of this industry, if we decide to grow up and stop eating meat.
Probably not the worst thing that’ll happen to that we fella ,soon he’ll be a big plate of delicious lamb chops …..little bit of sauce…..few chips ….lovely stuff
people laugh for all sorts of reasons, to be honest the heat in the studio would be far more distressing to the animal, did you not notice that one of them was panting hard under the studio lights. whats of far more concern is the slaughter of sheep and cattle under religious slaughter in irish factory’s, that a serious issue. as they avoid animal welfare regulations with religious slaughter
The rapid breathing and eye rolling is a sign of distress without a doubt. I think it ironic that anybody would try to make some big difference between any forms of meat production going on in Ireland – it beggars belief that anybody who supports the cruelty of castrating and tail docking of baby lambs without anaesthetic, their killing at a very young age after no life really, and their slaughter that (as secret recording shows) in no way lives up to the cosy, pain and stress free death that people like to believe, would split hairs by criticising the way these lovely animals are killed under Halal rules – the words pot and kettle spring to mind!
An average of 605,700 viewers & only 90 complaints. Why even bother responding. If I were in charge of a TV network, one rule I’d live by will be that complaints will only be aknowledged if the total number exceedes between half to three quarters the total audience.
You likely don’t understand that a majority of people who are upset (as witnessed by the tsunami of outrage on social media) will not make an ‘official complaint’ – they probably wouldn’t know how to. If you look at the monthly complaints received by it is usually four or five a month across all programmes – this is a massive record.
And human beings can spend days on trolleys awaiting health care and my vet will be in the farm yard to a sick animals in less than 30 minutes always. Cop on
I’ve never heard of humans being raised for meat and killed when they are still babies. I’ve never heard of humans being castrated without anaesthetic against their will – have you?
In some ways I think the true outrage is that people were faced with a sweet innocent creature and the reality that they are routinely trussed up and have horrible and painful things done to them without anaesthetic, and that they can clearly be seen to feel terror, and this is uncomfortable if you are one of those people who eats those lambs after they are slaughtered while still babies. I think that was the real problem for people – the horror of facing just a tiny hint of the reality.
When you actually think how desensitized we are to the pain and suffering we inflict on animals it’s quite shocking .
Here’s a very enlightening TED talk on the subject of ‘Carnism’
Oh ffs a time and a place to do this, and not in such alien surroundings to the lambs. Whilst this is a good invention, speeds up the time the the lamb is required to be restrained by farmer.
What annoys me is how the clown tubridy plays along with it for the populist laughs,
I come from a farming background and am hoping to become a vet. I have very strong views on the treatment of animals but this lamb carousel is in no way being cruel to the lamb. People that do not have a clue what procedures have to be done on the farm need to stop over reacting. The lamb carousel makes life easier on both the lamb and the farmer. To do certain procedures, the lamb would have to be caught numerous times. Spraying naval, ringing tail, and then dosing, vaccinating against orf with scabivax, tagging and other procedures a couple of weeks after birth. With the lamb carousel, it could be done with 2-3 catches of the lamb. Otherwise the lamb may have to be caught 5-6 times and is held usually by the farmer on top of a gate which induces a lot more stress on the lamb than it having to look down a camera. As if he knows what a camera is. Rant over.
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