Even if the U.S. Department of Agriculture is prohibited from further developing and implementing country-of-origin labeling (COOL) for beef and pork, the COOL law still requires that beef and pork be labeled at retail next year as to country of origin, according to USDA general counsel Nancy Bryson.
Bryson made the comment during her testimony at the House Agriculture Committee hearing on COOL last month (Feedstuffs, June 30).
In an interview, USDA associate general counsel for marketing and regulatory affairs John Golden told Feedstuffs the law mandates that specific products sold at specific locations by a specific date be labeled as to country of origin, and all fresh beef and pork and ground meat are included in those specifications.
The House agriculture appropriations subcommittee inserted language into the agriculture appropriations bill that would bar USDA from further promulgation of the COOL law as it applies to beef and pork in fiscal 2004, which begins in September, to allow legislators and regulators to better consider implications of the law (Feedstuffs, June 23.) The House Appropriations Committee has approved the agriculture appropriations bill with the inserted language.
The language must still survive the full House and then consideration in the Senate and be signed by the President.
However, Golden said should the language go into effect and stop USDA from additional work on the beef and pork section of the law, it doesn't necessarily excuse retailers from providing origin labels on covered beef and pork products and being able to demonstrate the veracity of those labels.
Accordingly, he said should funding at some time be restored for enforcement of the beef and pork section of the law, USDA could go to retailers, ask for proof that they have been providing accurate origin labels and take enforcement action if proof cannot be provided.
However, Golden said the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), which is responsible for developing and enforcing COOL, has broad enforcement discretion and likely wouldn't pursue such prosecution. Still, he said, "that would be a possibility."
In the absence of USDA enforcement, Golden said the COOL law and other statutes do not permit third parties to take civil action against retailers for alleged COOL violations, which means a consumer, or consumer group, could not take a retailer to court for alleged untruthful labeling.
However, he said another retailer who can demonstrate a claim -- e.g., a charge that a competitor is labeling beef or pork as U.S. origin when it is not and that the retailer lost sales to the competitor because of that -- can sue for damages.
COOL was written into the 2002 farm bill by a House-Senate conference at the urgence of certain senators, and it requires that, effective Oct. 1, 2004, all beef, pork and lamb muscle cuts and ground meat marketed at retail be labeled as to the country, or countries, of origin of the animal, or animals, from which the product was produced (Feedstuffs, April 29, 2002).
COOL also covers fish, both captured and farm raised, as well as fruit, produce and peanuts, but it does not cover meat and other products in the foodservice sector or poultry.
AMS developed voluntary guidelines for COOL for use between now and Oct. 1 next year (Feedstuffs, Dec. 2, 2002) and will write a final, mandatory rule based on comments received and experience with COOL, if any, during the voluntary period.
COOL documentation, tracking
In other points raised at the hearing but not previously reported, Bryson and USDA chief economist Keith Collins said the law also is quite specific in stating that beef and pork must be labeled as to the country, or countries, in which the animal, or animals, from which meat products are produced were "born, raised and slaughtered."
Therefore, all beef and pork at retail must say where the cattle and hogs were born, raised and slaughtered, and there must be an audit trail documenting this information, Bryson said. The law does not define U.S. origin as "anything that wasn't imported," she said, so just tracking imported cattle and hogs will not satisfy the law.
Furthermore, to believe producers are not required to assist in providing this documentation is wrong, she said, noting that two-thirds of the information on the born-raised-slaughtered requirement is "in their hands."
Bryson also said self-certification does not provide "an adequate basis ... to substantiate the truthfulness of the information" and more thorough verification will be needed.
R-Calf USA president Leo McDonald said self-certification should be acceptable for COOL because USDA accepts it for other programs, including mandatory price reporting in which packers "self-certify" that prices they are reporting to USDA are correct.
National Farmers Union president Dave Fredrickson agreed and said travelers flying from airports until recently self-certified that they had packed their own bags, "and we trusted that."
COOL demand
Collins said COOL will increase costs for producers, packers and retailers, and those costs will either be absorbed in the system or pushed to consumers, and if pushed to consumers and if consumers can't or won't pay the additional costs, decreased inclusion of beef and pork in their diets becomes a health issue. "Consumer welfare will decline," he said.
Collins said there is little evidence that consumers want COOL because if there was a demand for origin labels, the market would already be providing them, just as the market provides for other brands and differentiation. He noted that USDA has 40 branded programs that it oversees, including one for a U.S. label that no producer or other party ever asked about until two inquiries were made in the last year in response to the COOL law.
Studies do not show that consumers want and will pay "day in and day out from their household budgets" the higher prices that they would be charged, Collins said.
He reported comments from two grocery retailers submitted to AMS on the COOL rule. One, an eastern retailer, said the company received 38,000 comments from customers in 2002, none of which had something to do with origin labels, he said. The second, a midwestern retailer, said the company received 22,000 comments from customers in 2002, four of which had something to do with origin labels.
"Out of 60,000 comments, only four people asked about country of origin labels," he said.
Copyright Feedstuffs, Miller Publishing Company