Where's the Beef From?

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http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2004/01/01_400.html

 

Where's the Beef From?

 

If U.S. meat is safe, why don't GOP lawmakers want shoppers to know which cuts

are home-grown?

Michael Scherer

January/February 2004 Issue

American cattle ranchers were enduring a desperate holiday season, facing the

prospect of a mad cow outbreak on US soil and the consumer fright and economic

damage it would bring. So the ranchers' relief was palpable when, two days after

Christmas, federal officials announced that the cow in question, while

slaughtered in this country, was likely born, raised, and infected in Canada.

 

" This means the US is now a (mad-cow disease)-free country, " declared the top

lobbyist for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, before asking key

trading partners to drop bans on American beef hastily erected after traces of

mad-cow contamination was found in meat from a single adult Holstein cow,

slaughtered in Washington state.

 

But, while federal officials asserted that US beef was safe, even noting that

President Bush was still eating steak, the Dec. 27 announcement offered little

real reassurance for consumers. The USDA mark of inspection, long a symbol of

American quality, is stamped on meat regardless of where the cows it was cut

from were raised -- including meat from the 1.7 million cows US ranchers

imported from Canada in 2002. Unlike supermarket shoppers in the European Union,

Australia and Japan, consumers in this country have no way of knowing whether

the meat they buy comes from cows raised in the US or some other country -- a

labeling loophole Republican leaders in Congress quietly kept open last month.

 

Since tracing the single infected cow to a Canadian herd, the Agriculture

Department has announced plans to track every cow that is slaughtered in the

U.S., regardless of where it is born. But Congressional Republicans, with the

support of the White House, managed to stall a plan offering consumers similar

information. Meeting behind closed doors just days before the mad-cow discovery,

GOP leaders from the House and Senate quietly inserted language in the massive

2004 federal spending bill that will delay so-called Country of Origin Labeling

-- slated to begin in September of this year -- until 2006 for beef, pork,

produce and nuts.

 

The backroom maneuvering wiped away a November Senate vote favoring the new

labels, and ignores a series of polls that have found nearly all American

agricultural producers and most American consumers support the labeling. The

White House, by contrast, called the labeling rules " unreasonably burdensome " --

the same language used by lobbyists for meatpackers and grocers, the

initiative's most outspoken opponents.

 

Ranchers, farmers and consumer advocates have long sought the country of origin

labels to give Americans a choice at the checkout line. They expect it to

increase the value of U.S. meat and produce, meaning billions of dollars in

potential profit for U.S. ranchers and farmers, while giving consumers the power

to act on food safety information they see in the news. In 2002, Congress

agreed, ordering a new labeling program to begin later this year. But the

meat-packing and grocery lobbies fought back with startling success, winning

over key Republican leaders like Rep. Henry Bonilla of Texas, who chairs the

Agricultural Appropriations subcommittee, and Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, who

chairs the Appropriations Committee. Supporters now fear the delay, if approved

by the Senate on January 20, could be a death knell for country of origin

labeling, especially if President Bush wins reelection.

 

" There is no way that this program is going to get implemented after the

election because President Bush hates it and because the processors and the meat

packers hate it, " says Katy Ziegler, a lobbyist for the National Farmers Union,

which supports country of origin labeling, or COOL. " And they give him

significant campaign contributions. " Since the last presidential election, 88

percent of the meat processing industry's $2.6 million in political

contributions have gone to Republicans, with President Bush as the single

largest recipient, according to the Center For Responsive Politics.

 

A coalition of 135 farm and consumer groups is planning its own lobbying blitz

in the next several weeks. They aim to block the appropriations bill until COOL

is reinstated, or at least force Congress to revisit the issue later this year.

Several farm state senators, including Tom Daschle (D-SD), Chuck Grassley (R-IA)

and Byron Dorgan (D-ND), have said they hope to use the momentum provided by the

mad cow concerns to strip away the GOP-backed delay. Last month, Sen. Dorgan

wrote a letter to Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman asking the Bush

Administration to drop its opposition to the measure. " This case … demonstrates

that COOL will be helpful to American ranchers and protective of American

consumers, " Dorgan wrote.

 

" There are lots of appropriations bills yet to do, so there will be other

opportunities, but there is no reason to put this off, " says Barry Piatt, a

spokesman for Dorgan. " The Senate was already on the record with wanting to go

forward with COOL. " Daniel Pfeiffer, a spokesman for Sen. Daschle, said the

Minority Leader is also working on ways to attack the spending bill. " He is

opposed to the bill for a number of reasons and COOL is at the top of that

list, " says Pfeiffer. " He's committed to getting this fixed one way or another. "

 

Still, the proponents of country of origin labeling are likely to have a fight

on their hands. The American Meat Institute, the Grocery Manufacturers of

America along with cattlemen who work along the Mexican border are responding

with industry-funded studies estimating a first-year cost of $1.6 to $1.7

billion for beef labeling alone. The Agriculture Department's own studies are

far less certain, estimating an initial cost of between $582 million and $3.9

billion, though the General Accounting Office said portions of that estimate

were " questionable and not well supported " and probably high. That did not stop

White House analysts from using the agency's imprecise analysis to call the new

labeling " one of the most burdensome rules to be reviewed by this

Administration. " That pronouncement came just a few weeks after administration

officials met with lobbyists from the American Meat Institute.

 

" This rule is costly and burdensome with no real benefit to consumers, " says

Janet Riley, an AMI spokeswoman. " There is absolutely no evidence that consumers

want this law. " As proof, Riley points to a 2002 poll, funded by an industry

group. that found three quarters of consumers said no additional information was

needed on food labels. But the question made no mention the country of origin

labeling proposal. Other polls, in which consumers were asked specifically if

they would favor country of origin labeling, found strong support for the

approach. In one such poll, Packer Magazine, a produce industry trade journal,

found in 2002 that 86 percent of consumers favored mandatory country labeling

for produce. The National Public Policy Agricultural Committee, a project of the

University of Kansas, similarly found in 2001 that 98 percent of agriculture

producers favored labeling.

 

" There is definitely evidence that [consumers] like country of origin labeling, "

says Wendy J. Umberger, an agriculture producer at Colorado State University,

whose research has been used by the American Meat Institute. While noting that

respondents often mistake COOL for " a new way of tracing bad food back to its

source in the event of contamination, " Umberger argues the polling clearly shows

that American consumers are " willing to pay a premium for U.S. meat. " Even among

the Republican leadership, that argument has appeal. While accepting a delay for

meat, produce, and nut labeling, Sen. Stevens of Alaska made sure that labels

would start appearing later this year on fish, including the wild salmon from

his home state. " Alaskans know that wild fish from our waters are healthier and

better tasting then farmed fish from overseas, " Stevens said of the new labeling

in 2002. " This provision will allow the rest of America to make a more informed

choice. "

 

Now, with the mad-cow discovery still fresh in the national memory, COOL

advocates argue that labeling will also allow consumers to make informed choices

in response to food safety news. They point to a case just last year in which

green onions imported from Mexico were blamed for more than 600 cases of

Hepatitis A. " It's about giving consumers the information they need to act on

what they hear in the news, " says Patty Lovera, a lobbyist at Public Citizen.

" The arguments that this wasn't a food safety issue started with the opponents

of COOL. "

 

And COOL advocates have been given even more ammunition, as several major U.S.

trading partners are citing food safety concerns in calling for country of

origin tracking. Last year, after mad cow disease was discovered in Canadian

herds, Japanese and South Korean agriculture officials asked their American

counterparts to segregate Canadian born beef from U.S. exports. " I would like to

ask you again to indicate the country of origin, " read one letter from the

Japanese Animal Health Division to U.S. officials in June. The Department of

Agriculture denied the request, but did arrange a voluntary program for U.S.

exporters to assuage the Japanese concern. That half-step response has now come

back to haunt the USDA and beef producers, argues Michael Stumo, general counsel

of the Organization for Competitive Markets, an agricultural research firm that

supports labeling.

 

" We would likely not be in this export beef boycott situation if we had

country-of-origin labeling today. "

 

Michael Scherer is Mother Jones' Washington correspondent.

 

 

 

 

 

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