Consumers Want Country of Origin Labeling for Food
by Public Citizen
www.citizen.org

Speaking from my own perspective, with the increasing incidents and concerns over mad cow disease, humans dying from Streptococcus suis (a pig disease), and the pandemic of bird flu abroad, you would think our elected officials would baulk at the idea of making COOL a voluntary program. Considering the potential risk to the public health, and the fact that so few food processors and meatpackers have been willing to participate, we see once again, a  Congress that caters to the corporate interests who continue to choose profit over people!

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As corporate consolidation of agriculture continues to drive family farmers out of business in record numbers, more of our food supply is controlled by a small group of companies. These companies don’t want to give ranchers and farmers a desperately needed way to identify their crops and livestock as products of the United States.

Twenty-one companies and trade organizations that are avowed foes of the mandatory COOL law, and have registered to lobby against it, have spent a total of $29.2 million to lobby Congress and the executive branch on COOL and other issues from 2000 to 2004. These groups are some of the biggest names in agribusiness and include the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), Wal-Mart Stores, Cargill, Tyson Foods, American Meat Institute
and the Grocery Manufacturers of America.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – As the Senate prepares to vote this week on its version of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) budget, a new Public Citizen investigation just released illustrates how big agribusiness used millions of dollars in lobbying expenditures and campaign contributions, and a network of Washington insiders with close connections to the Bush administration and Congress, to thwart a consumer-friendly provision mandating country-of-origin labeling, popularly known as COOL.

When shopping for food, the most basic ingredient a consumer needs to help choose between products is a label. So why isn’t there a label noting the country of origin for meat – just as you can learn whether your shirt was made in China?

Consumers want mandatory country-of-origin labeling for food products, commonly known as COOL. A recent public opinion poll of 1,000 people shows that an overwhelming majority of consumers – 85 percent – favor labeling that will tell them where their food is raised or produced.

Additionally, 74 percent support the idea of Congress making such labeling mandatory, and 55 percent have “little or not much trust” in the meat, seafood, produce and
grocery industries to voluntarily provide country-of-origin information. These findings are similar to a 2002 survey published in The Packer, a trade journal.

If Congress were listening to the public, the COOL program would have been in place a year ago, on Sept. 30, 2004. That is the date the 2002 Farm Bill mandated the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to require industry to begin mandatory country-of-origin labeling for beef,
lamb, pork, fish, fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables, and peanuts. The label would be found on foods sold in grocery stores and would state the food’s country of origin. (For meat, the animal would have to be born, raised and slaughtered in the United States to get the “Product of
U.S.” seal.)

Mandatory COOL was one of the most significant wins for family farmers and consumers in the controversial 2002 Farm Bill. But Big Agribusiness, especially the meat and grocery industries, doesn’t want consumers to know where their food comes from, and it worked to kill COOL before it ever got started. First, agribusiness interests tried to use the regulatory process at the USDA and the White House to undermine support for the measure, including by mislabeling
COOL as having few benefits but costing billions of dollars. Next, it got Congress through the more secretive appropriations process to delay implementation of the law by two years – to Sept. 30, 2006 – for everything covered by the law except fish (COOL for seafood went into effect in April 2005). And the House agriculture appropriations bill for fiscal year 2006, which will soon be negotiated with the Senate, would delay for an additional year a mandatory COOL program for meat.

Meanwhile, key lawmakers are trying to change COOL into a voluntary program, legislation that 65 members of the House and Senate are sponsoring. Voluntary labeling has been an option for two years, yet few food processors and meatpackers have been willing to participate.

As corporate consolidation of agriculture continues to drive family farmers out of business in record numbers, more of our food supply is controlled by a small group of companies. These companies don’t want to give ranchers and farmers a desperately needed way to identify their crops and livestock as products of the United States. They seem to be nervous – and rightfully so – that consumers won’t agree with their vision of shifting food production to the developing
world, where labor and land are cheap, and environmental, worker safety and pesticide rules are more lenient.

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