UNITED STATES-NO REPRIEVE ON COUNTRY OF ORIGIN LABELLING.
A law requiring meat to be labeled by country oforigin will go into effect as planned in March, but the government will be
asking producers to go above and beyond what the law will require of them, the
U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Friday.
The rule, which the Bush administration wrote to implement the labeling law
passed by Congress last year, doesn’t go far enough to inform consumers where
their food comes from, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a letter to industry
representatives.
Vilsack said some parts of the rule "raise legitimate concerns."
To address those concerns he said he was asking the meat industry to
voluntarily add more information on the labels for what they produce and keep
tighter track of inventoried products and where they came from.
"In order to provide consumers with sufficient information about the origin
of products, processors should voluntarily include information about what
production step occurred in each country when multiple countries appear on the
label," Vilsack instructed meat producers.
Furthermore, under the Bush administration rule, ground-beef makers could
leave labels for inventoried product unchanged for 60 days even if they no
longer accurately reflected the origin of the meat.
"This provision allows for labels to be used in a way that does not clearly
indicate the product’s country of origin," Vilsack said in the letter.
"Reducing the time allowance to 10 days would limit the amount of product with
these labels and would enhance the credibility of the label."
Vilsack said it would be a voluntary decision for industry to follow these
additional demands, but he also threatened to redo the federal rule if
companies didn’t comply.
USDA, he said, "will be closely reviewing industry compliance with the
regulation and its performance in relation to these suggestions for voluntary
action."
The American Meat Institute announced Friday that it was pleased the rule
would be implemented on schedule in March, but made no promises about
compliance with Vilsack’s extra demands on industry.
AMI President J. Patrick Boyle said the "extent that companies are able and
elect to go beyond these federal labeling requirements, as requested today
by...Vilsack, is an individual company decision.