US beer company under fire for naming product after Pacific island nuclear test site
- The Manhattan Project Beer Company’s ‘Bikini Atoll’ beer has drawn criticism from residents of the Republic of the Marshall Islands
- They say the name is insensitive to people still dealing with the after-effects of radiation decades after nuclear testing took place
Manhattan Project Beer Company is under scrutiny by Marshall Islanders who were exposed to high levels of radiation by US government research from 1946 to 1958, The Pacific Daily News reported on Thursday.
The government and residents of the Republic of the Marshall Islands have objected to the company’s beer named Bikini Atoll, an area of the island chain that remains uninhabitable.
The name is insensitive to people still dealing with the effects of radiation decades later, islanders said.
The company has several beers with nuclear-themed names including Half-life, Plutonium-239, Particles Collide, and 10 Nanoseconds.
“Our beer named Bikini Atoll was not created to mock or trivialise the nuclear testing that took place in the Marshall Islands,” the company said in a social media post. The company is “creating awareness of the wider impacts and implications” of US nuclear research programmes, the statement said.