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On Again - Off Again COOL

A

Anonymous

Guest
I thought this article was interesting- again the multinational Corporates and the USDA say they can keep track of and will verify Country of Origin for another country on imported beef (like they did for Japan, Korea, and several other countries previously)-- But they still won't do it for the US CONSUMER..... :( :( :mad:

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6/13/2007 1:39:00 PM


Aussies In A Tizzy Over Alleged U.S. Beef Imports



The Australian Beef Association is demanding that the federal government revise beef-import regulations after the group found canned beef product from the United States in local supermarkets,
according to news reports.

ABA members claimed this week they found canned beef product manufactured in the United States by Austin, Minn.-based Hormel Foods, spurring an outcry because Australia bars U.S. beef imports on fears of bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

However, Australia's Quarantine and Inspection Authority says the beef hails from BSE-free countries, but are processed for export in the United States.

"Products imported from the U.S. must be certified as containing beef sourced only from Australia, New Zealand or Brazil, which all share the highest BSE risk rating," Federal Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran told reporters.

Source switch

Hormel Australia general manager Scott Martin, said his company has imported Stagg chili and beans into Australia since 1998, explaining that they'd contained U.S. ground beef until America's first case of BSE in December 2003, and afterward precooked beef from Brazil.

"The only U.S. product in the Stagg cans is the beans and sauce ingredients — not the beef," Martin said.

But ABA doesn't buy it. John Carter, one of the group's directors, said existing labeling laws are lax.

"Who is supervising the fact that the beef that's going into these cans is coming from Australia or New Zealand or anywhere else?" he asked. "There's no regulatory body that would be in control of it."

The federal government points out that AQIA inspects imported foods, including that which comes from the United States.



Source: Tom Johnston on 6/13/2007 for Meatingplace.com
 

PORKER

Well-known member
"Who is supervising the fact that the beef that's going into these cans is coming from Australia or New Zealand or anywhere else?" he asked. "There's no regulatory body that would be in control of it."

NO TRACEBACK AT ALL !

Unless the New Food Agency takes over USDA And FDA
 

Sandhusker

Well-known member
So you've got a group of domestic producers concerned that laws are being bent so the large US corporations can export foreign beef into their markets; doesn't that qualify them as "protectionists"?
 

PORKER

Well-known member
Cattle Producers Request COOL Meeting with AMI
By R-CALF USA
Jun 18, 2007 - 5:16:37 PM

Washington, D.C. – Today, R-CALF USA responded to a June 15, 2007, letter from American Meat Institute (AMI) President and CEO J. Patrick Boyle to request a meeting with AMI – if – AMI genuinely “desires to assist its meatpacking members in seeking an effective, efficient and accurate means of verifying the country of origin of live cattle, without the burden of additional paperwork and with the benefit of minimizing errors.”

“AMI recently recommended that its meatpacker members start to ‘demand’ that U.S. cattle producers provide affidavits, access to records, third-party verifications, and indemnification of packer liability in an effort to comply with the 2002 country-of-origin labeling (COOL) law, and R-CALF is requesting that AMI rescind that notice at once,” said R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard.

Interestingly, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) – also on June 15, 2007 – announced a new 60-day public comment period on the 2002 COOL law.

“If Congress intended for AMI to second-guess or otherwise preempt the lawful establishment of requirements to be imposed on all market participants in order to properly implement the COOL law, it would have stated so – but it did not,” Bullard noted. “Instead, Congress expressly directed, and exclusively authorized, only the Agriculture Secretary to issue such regulations.”

“If AMI professes to know what requirements the Secretary intends to impose on industry participants to implement the COOL law, then AMI must have been involved in unlawful, ex parte communications with the Secretary in order to obtain such knowledge,” R-CALF USA’s letter states. “If this is the case, then the Secretary’s action…to reopen the public comment period…is a shell game, inasmuch as the outcome of the rulemaking process is already known by AMI before the agency even considers public comments.”

R-CALF USA’s letter also informed AMI that a recent Idaho District Court decision invalidated proposed Bureau of Land Management (BLM) grazing regulations on the basis that the court believed the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) wrote the rules instead of the BLM.

“If AMI, which at this point professes to already know the requirements of the yet unpublished final COOL rules, likewise has written the regulations to implement COOL, our two organizations, along with the Secretary, may be involved in a protracted dispute,” R-CALF USA’s letter continues. “…If AMI does not know the (COOL) requirements the Secretary will impose…, then AMI has no legal or economic justification for its action of recommending that its meatpacker members demand that U.S. farmers and ranchers begin relinquishing their rights, incurring additional production costs, and otherwise begin comporting to meatpacker demands made under the false pretense that such demands are necessary to comply with the 2002 COOL law…”

R-CALF USA advised AMI that its recommendations to its meatpacker members constitute an effort to preemptively influence market rules without any legal or economic justification and further raises the question of explicit collusion, where packers would be colluding to fix the rules of the market for the purpose of seeking an unfair advantage over independent cattle producers.

R-CALF USA again reminded AMI that it would file a complaint with the Grain Inspection Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) against any meatpacker that follows AMI’s recommendations of June 13, 2007. R-CALF USA views AMI’s recommendations to be a direct violation of the Packers and Stockyards Act, which prohibits meatpackers from engaging in unfair, unjustly discriminatory and deceptive trade practices.

To avoid such a complaint, R-CALF USA proposed that the two groups meet to discuss how best to verify the origins of cattle. “The U.S. beef industry would be best served if the cattle and beef segments were to agree on a simplified approach to COOL implementation. . . Such an effort would be far more productive than pursuing the present course that will most certainly lead our respective industry segments into a protracted dispute,” the letter concluded.
 

RobertMac

Well-known member
Sandhusker said:
So you've got a group of domestic producers concerned that laws are being bent so the large US corporations can export foreign beef into their markets; doesn't that qualify them as "protectionists"?

A few global corporation are out to dominate the global food trade and will have the ability to pit producer against producer...both within country and between countries...to reduce their cost of inputs. That is the nature of commodity agriculture and we have been victims for years. To find who is enabling these corporations, producers only have to look in a mirror!

Beef is our product...why give it away?
 
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