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Label limbo

Uncertainty over country-of-origin labeling regulations leaves food packagers wondering what’s next.

Even after a controversial late January congressional vote seemed to decide things, the situation about country-of-origin labeling (COOL) for meat, produce, nuts, and fish is about as stable as Texas Tech basketball coach Bobby Knight.

The situation is explosive for a number of reasons. First and foremost, Senate Democrats and Republicans were angered about being bulldozed by House Republicans in late January. The GOPers had stuck a two-year COOL delay amendment in the omnibus 2004 appropriations bill.

The Senate was already on record as supporting the September 30, 2004, deadline for mandatory COOL. But it had to accept the House two-year delay amendment or else earn the nation’s political enmity for holding up approval of the omnibus appropriations bill. That inaction would have brought the federal government to a standstill.

The House GOP acted at the behest of groups such as the National Food Processors Assn. and the American Meat Institute, joined by individual companies such as Kraft Foods, Northfield, IL, and Tyson Foods, Springdale, AR. Those companies have argued that mandatory labeling will result in packaging costs way out of proportion to any consumer benefit, a position seemingly confirmed by a U.S. Department of Agriculture economic study. Spokespersons for Kraft and Tyson did not return repeated phone calls.

The USDA’s original notion, based on the law passed by Congress in 2002, was to require all muscle cuts of beef (including veal), lamb, and pork; ground beef, ground lamb, and ground pork; farm-raised fish and shellfish; wild fish and shellfish; perishable agricultural commodities (fresh and frozen fruit and vegetables); and peanuts to be labeled at retail to indicate their country of origin. Products produced in the U.S. would have to add this information to its labels. Processed food with imported ingredients, such as hot dogs or orange juice, would not have to be labeled.

Restoring the deadline

Resurrection of the 2004 deadline may be at hand, though. Senior senators from both parties, buoyed by the political boost the Mad Cow scare in Washington state last December conferred on COOL, are vowing to reinstitute the September 30, 2004 deadline.

Melanie Alvord, spokeswoman for Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Stevens “would welcome the opportunity to revisit the issue” in the first appropriations bill that comes to a vote in Stevens’s committee. Stevens voted for retaining the September 2004 COOL deadline when that issue came up for a vote on the Senate floor.

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