Beef up labeling of what we eat
By A TIMES EDITORIAL
Published July 8, 2007
Probably the last thing on your mind as you bite into that hamburger grilled to perfection in the back yard is what country the meat came from, or the origin of that lettuce and tomato adorning the bun. Then again, maybe you've been reading the news. Mad cow disease in Canada. Toxic ingredients out of China. And a tomato that tastes like a tomato ... fuggitaboutit.
Congress has the solution in hand; all it has to do is enforce a law already on the books. Called the Country of Origin Label (COOL, for short), it would require food producers and grocers to tell consumers where the beef, pork, lamb, fresh fruits and vegetables, seafood and peanuts they buy were raised or grown.
That information should already be on labels, but the powerful beef industry has held the law hostage for the past three years. The exception is seafood, whose label identifies country of origin and whether it is wild or farm-raised.
Why the different outcome? It boils down to the same thing: power politics. Country-of-origin labeling would have been mandatory in 2004 had Rep. Henry Bonilla, R-Texas, not found ways to stop it, according to the New York Times. First, as head of the agriculture appropriations subcommittee, he delayed enforcement for two years. Then, he forbade the Department of Agriculture from spending any money to implement the law.
Bonilla had a willing partner in (now former) Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, whose three key administrators on labeling came from the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. And you can probably guess which member of Congress got the most campaign contributions from the beef industry in 2006. Yep, Bonilla, though he lost his re-election bid.
The beef industry doesn't want its customers to know that the product wrapped in plastic could have come from any number of countries. Imported beef is cheaper to produce but isn't as palatable to many consumers.
Just the opposite happened with seafood labeling. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, as chairman of the Appropriations Committee, used that post to look out for the seafood industry back home. Rather than being a turnoff to consumers, labels identifying seafood as wild and from Alaska increased demand. (Who knows where that shrimp served in restaurants comes from, but probably Asia.)
The same political sea change that swept Bonilla out of office and Democrats into power in Congress gives supporters of the labeling law new hope. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., who replaced Bonilla as subcommittee head, favors the law. "There will be mandatory COOL by 2008 at the latest, " DeLauro said.
We hope she hasn't underestimated the opponents of honest labeling. But we're willing to bet that Americans want to know where their food comes from. Considering what is going on with food production nowadays, consumers need to make informed choices.