Where'd the beef come from? Gaps cloud new food-labeling law
By SUSAN SALISBURY
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 03, 2008
Now coming to a supermarket near you: beef from the United States, Mexico, Canada, New Zealand and Uruguay.
All in the same pound of hamburger.
What's COOL, what's not
As of Sept. 30, the Country of Origin Labeling, or COOL, law requires fresh meat, poultry, fish, fruits, vegetables and certain nuts to bear a label stating the product's country of origin. But anything processed, including items that are cooked, salted or dried, are exempt. Below, a guide to the COOL and un-COOL.
COOL
Meat sold in supermarkets.
Fish sold in supermarkets*
Raw peanuts
Pork chops
Bagged lettuce
Sliced cantaloupe
Fresh salmon
Fresh shrimp
NOT COOL
Meat sold in butcher shops.
Fish sold in fish markets
Peanut butter
Roasted peanuts
Bacon
Trail mix
Bagged mixed salad greens
Smoked salmon
Cooked shrimp
*Fish sold in supermarkets has been required to be labeled since 2005.
Source: Consumers Union, Yonkers, N.Y.
New federal rules debuted this week mandating that food labels reflect where the food originated. Its intent is to let consumers know where their food came from. But gaps in the legislation, known as country-of-origin labeling or COOL, can still leave shoppers in the dark.
For instance, carrots have to be labeled. Frozen carrots and peas don't. Frozen french fries have to be labeled. Frozen seasoned french fries don't.
And that New York strip steak in the supermarket case? A recent trip to Publix found one labeled "Product of U.S., Mexico, Canada."
The multiple-country problem with beef is the strangest and most contentious quirk to come out of COOL, held up for six years by food and meat industry groups that protested it would be too difficult and expensive to implement. Processed foods are still exempt. That includes bagged salads, mixed frozen vegetables and 95 percent of peanuts, pecans and macadamia nuts - roasting is considered a form of processing.
Now, just days after the rule took effect, a group of 31 senators has asked U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schaefer to put more restrictive meat-labeling rules in place. And Senate bills were introduced this week seeking to extend the mandatory labeling to dairy products and pharmaceuticals.
Despite the law's many loopholes, "It is a good first step," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety for the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington.
"Consumers simply have a right to know where their food comes from," said Urvashi Rangan, senior scientist with New York-based Consumers Union. "An overwhelming majority, 92 percent of Americans, want to know," Rangan said of a recent survey.
For that reason, the federal law hits home with Linda Rex, 63, a seasonal Boynton Beach resident and grandmother of 17. "I think it's wonderful, particularly because we should be eating more local. When they ship stuff from far away, it doesn't have any nutrients left anyway," Rex said. "If it doesn't come from where I am now, I don't really want it."
In fact, concerns about food imports from China and Canada helped move COOL along.
"It does provide a certain safety measure for consumers to make informed decisions," Rangan said, citing recent incidents involving contaminated seafood from China, and Mexican jalapeños linked to salmonella. "It can also help consumers verify regional authenticity of a product, such as Parmesan cheese or Parma ham."
There's definitely an "ewww" factor for discovering a pound of ground beef could be from cows from different countries that wound up at the same slaughterhouse. But Mark Dopp, senior vice president for regulatory affairs at the American Meat Institute in Washington, said the meatpacking industry needs some flexibility.
Meatpacking plants are huge, handling herds of cattle from multiple nations. "The cost of segregating cattle at the plant, keeping carcasses separate and keeping meat products separated is extremely burdensome." (NOT)
Without keeping carcasses separate, said Denver-based National Farmers Union president Tom Buis, 85 percent of beef "muscle cuts" such as steaks, will carry a "Canada, Mexico, USA label" as meatpackers try to cover all possibilities.
That's a problem for Bill Bullard, CEO of cattle producers group R-CALF in Billings, Mont. The multiple-country label should never be allowed for products that are exclusively of U.S. origin, he said. Bullard contends that meatpackers want to use that label to mask the fact that they are buying cheaper imported animals and slaughtering them in the United States.
Labeling is much more straightforward for most other covered commodities. Foods processed and packaged in other countries already are required to be labeled under tariff laws dating back to the 1930s.
And for Floridians, who have had the benefits of a fresh-produce-only labeling law since 1979, country-of-origin designations on fruits and vegetables are nothing new. But now frozen fruits and vegetables, chicken, pork, lamb, goat, peanuts, ginseng, pecans and macadamia nuts will be covered.
Bob Graham, who signed the Florida law as governor in 1979, and worked on COOL during his time in the U.S. Senate, said the federal rule "is long delayed. Many of the arguments that were made against the federal law, that it would cause sharp price increases in vegetables in stores, and would be too cumbersome for the stores to manage, were all proven to be false by the Florida experience. That was a powerful factor in getting the federal law changed."
J. Luis Rodriguez, a trade adviser with Florida Farmers Inc. in Lake Worth and a former vegetable grower who helped author the Florida law, said pressure from retailers almost resulted in a voluntary COOL law, which Rodriguez contends would have worked about as well as a voluntary speed limit.
It took a national coalition, Americans for Country of Origin Labeling, that included the National Farmers Union, Consumers Union and more than 100 other groups, to push COOL into law, Rodriquez said.
Hugh MacMillan, a Tallahassee lobbyist who worked with Rodriguez on the Florida law, said he's glad to see federal COOL get its day in the sun. "It has a certain genius. It brings the consumers into the equation