Do you know where your beef comes from?

New labels soon will tell you nations of origin of more foods

South Florida Sun-Sentinel
September 23, 2008

Every package of raw hamburger and chicken in Florida supermarkets soon will be labeled with a fact already found on fresh produce and seafood: Where the food came from.

A new federal law takes effect Sept. 30 and requires stores to label unprocessed beef, pork, lamb, veal, chicken and nuts with the country of origin. It's the result of a six-year fight won by consumer advocates.

"People have a right to know," said Patty Lovera, assistant director of Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit environmental group. "People say, 'I know this about my clothes; I know this about my sneakers; I know this about the tablecloth; why don't I know this about my food?'"

Advocates convinced the U.S. Department of Agriculture that consumers could make better food choices if they knew the producing nation, with its food-safety history in light of any food-borne outbreaks at that moment.

Some consumers prefer to buy local products or avoid food shipped long distances. Others have concerns about some nations' less restrictive farm-labor laws, environmental records and pesticide rules.

"I just don't eat it if it's from another country," said Suzanne Foster, co-owner of a family fishing business near Clearwater, one of about 1,000 consumers who wrote to the USDA to support the labeling change. "The law will help. We should know where everything's coming from. We can grow so much here. Why do we have to import food?"

But don't expect labels on everything. The USDA exempted items sold to restaurants, and "processed" food that has been cooked, cured or mixed with other food.

The new law demands labels on fresh produce, too, although Florida has required them on fruit and vegetables since 1979.

The USDA estimates labeling will cost $2.5 billion in the first year and $500 million annually, borne mainly by supermarkets. The cost will be passed to consumers, but the USDA predicts only small price increases: 7 cents per pound for beef, 4 cents for pork and a fraction of a cent for chicken.

The source of food has become the focus during disease outbreaks, most recently a summer-long bout with salmonella first tied to tomatoes grown in Florida or Mexico and later to Mexican peppers.

Congress passed mandatory labeling in 2002, but officials delayed its start twice amid strong opposition from the food industry. Seafood labeling rules began three years ago, and the rest were finalized this year. Retailers and meat producers said they gave up the fight and will comply, but still see little benefit for consumers.

"What can they learn from seeing the country?" said Mark Dopp, a senior vice president for the American Meat Institute. "This is not a food-safety-related law. This tells nothing about safety. If there was a demand for this, consumers would have asked for this, and we have not heard that."

The rules allow meat producers wiggle room. If a cow is raised in Canada and slaughtered in the United States, it would be labeled from both countries. If a ground-beef factory uses cattle from four countries, the label can list all four even if not all were used in a package.

Half of the total volume of all the food items addressed by the law will not be labeled, because they are sold to U.S. restaurants, other food services and small food shops that are exempt.

But consumer advocates are most concerned because the law excludes the large amount of processed food Americans eat. The USDA decided it would not be meaningful to label food that has been changed, even as simply as cooking, adding a packet of soy sauce with a chicken breast or putting peas and carrots in a single bag.

As a result, no labels will appear on an estimated 95 percent of nuts, 62 percent of pork, half of seafood, one-third of beef and 20 percent of produce.

In South Florida, supermarket managers said they know what to expect because of Florida's produce label laws, and they predicted consumers would notice only small changes. Some products will arrive at the store labeled; others will be labeled by the store on packages, price cards or storage bins.

Whole Foods already has origin labels on many meat products and won't be affected much, spokeswoman Libba Letton said.

Publix will go beyond the federal rules, at times, by labeling U.S. fruit by state and labeling some prepared items, said South Florida spokeswoman Kim Jaeger.

Plenty of labels will still be missing on Oct. 1, since food produced before then is exempt. Dopp, of the American Meat Institute, said producers and stores need more time to deal with some of the changes. And while the vast majority of shoppers may not know the new labels are coming, advocates said there is some buzz.

"People seem to like it," said Liz Compton, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which enforces the label laws.

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