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Group Requests Improvements to COOL in Formal Comments to USDA Washington, D.C. (September 26, 2008) – R-CALF USA has identified several positive provisions, as well as areas in need of improvement, in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Interim Final Rule (IFR) on mandatory country-of-origin labeling (COOL), scheduled to take effect Sept. 30. The group submitted its formal comments to USDA today. R-CALF USA’s comments follow on the heels of a joint letter sent today to USDA signed by 32 U.S. Senators, which seeks to achieve many of the same improvements sought by the cattle-producer organization. First, R-CALF USA’s comments informed USDA that it appreciated the agency’s adoption of numerous simplification steps that did not exist in the agency’s proposed rule published in 2003. R-CALF USA also stated that it supports the inclusion of hamburger and beef patties under the definition of ground beef, the agency’s elimination of “chain of custody” requirements for retailers, as well as the agency’s authorization to use state marketing programs to achieve compliance with COOL requirements. The group’s comments then identified the following problems with the IFR for COOL: 1) It infers that existing disease identification systems are compliant with USDA’s proposed National Animal Identification System (NAIS), when the opposite is true due to the NAIS’ overreaching requirement for a national premises registration. 2) It does not prohibit packers from using a North American label on USA beef. 3) It appears to allow retailers to hang a sign over a meat case that would indicate the meat case may contain meat from the USA, Canada and Mexico, even if the meat case were filed only with USA beef – again, this would constitute a North American label. 4) It allows processors/retailers to avoid labeling food items that have undergone minor processes such as the use of flavoring and/or solutions, breading, cooking, etc. 5) It treats specific processing steps administered in a foreign country more favorably than it treats the same processing steps administered in the United States, and achieves this inconsistent outcome by allowing a covered commodity that meets the requirements for a U.S. label to retain its U.S. label even after the commodity is exported, subject to further processing in a foreign country, and imported into the United States. 6) It states that processors must remove from the ground-meat origin labels the name of any country from which no raw product is sourced after a period of more than 60 days – a period R-CALF USA believes is far too long. 7) It unnecessarily provides packers/processors with “legal access” to producers’ substantiating origin documentation. 8) It improperly infers that USDA’s proposed NAIS system is itself an official identification system, even though there is no evidence that the proposed NAIS is sanctioned either by statute or regulation. “USDA’s COOL Rule defies congressional intent by allowing meat from animals that were exclusively born, raised and slaughtered in the United States to be labeled with a multiple country-of-origin label, thereby improperly implying that the meat came from the United States and one or more foreign countries, otherwise known as a North American label,” said R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard. “We have urged USDA to correct the ‘North American’ labeling problem before the Sept. 30 COOL implementation date,” he continued. “Failure to close this gaping loophole would nullify the purpose of the COOL law and would be a tremendous disservice to U.S. consumers and to the thousands of independent U.S. cattle producers who’ve fought for many years now to ensure that consumers would have the ability to exercise an informed choice in their grocery store when purchasing food for themselves and their families. “We also are recommending that USDA expressly exclude cooking, curing, smoking, restructuring and/or the use of flavorings and solutions from among the processes applied to covered commodities that exempt the covered commodity from the COOL law,” Bullard said. “After all, a beef roast still retains its identity as a beef roast – even after it’s cooked; seasoned burgers are still burgers, and just because steak fingers are breaded, they’re still steak fingers.” Additionally, R-CALF USA recommends that USDA prohibit the retention of a U.S. origin label for any commodity that undergoes additional processing or handling in a foreign country. “After all the recent food safety scares, we believe the last thing consumers want is to have USA-labeled beef shipped out of the country, processed in a foreign establishment USDA basically has no control over and cannot guarantee the sanitation standards of, and then shipped back to unsuspecting consumers with the USA label intact,” Bullard asserted. “Consumers have a right to know which products are produced entirely in the United States.” R-CALF USA also believes the 60-day rule for processors and ground-meat labels is far too long and should be reduced to no longer than one week. “This would reduce the period during which consumers would be misinformed as to the true origins of the ground-meat product, and given the perishable nature of meat – which necessarily limits the duration of processing – one week should be a reasonable time period for processors to update their labels and determine from what country the processors will be sourcing their raw products,” Bullard explained. R-CALF USA also has requested if meat display cases contain commodities from more than one country, then those commodities must be physically separated – according to their origins – within the meat display case and a separate origin declaration must be associated with each section. “This additional language is necessary to ensure that consumers can exercise an informed choice, even if commodities of differing origins were displayed in a single meat display case,” said Bullard. R-CALF USA believes that because the IFR already authorizes packers to use producer affidavits to verify animals’ origins, and because the law authorizes only the Agriculture Secretary to conduct audits, that packers/processors have no justifiable reason for having “legal access” to any additional records of cattle producers and/or sellers. “We recommend that USDA eliminate the requirement that suppliers responsible for initiating an origin claim have legal access to records necessary to substantiate that claim, and instead, require that such suppliers possess such records, as is already required by the COOL Rule in the form of a either a producer affidavit or other record,” Bullard emphasized. R-CALF USA also requested that USDA accept the recommendations of industry stakeholders to authorize the use of a visual inspection of livestock for the presence or absence of import markings, and to allow cattle producers to use their visual inspection as a basis for generating a producer affidavit attesting to the origin of livestock, based on whether or not any import markings exist. Finally, R-CALF USA urged USDA to eliminate all references to the NAIS in the IFR and, instead, to allow the use of “existing official identification systems that require an official identification device or method.” This change would ensure that verification of origins can be accomplished with existing systems such as state brand laws and the brucellosis identification system, for example,” said Bullard. Note: To view or download R-CALF USA’s comments on the COOL Interim Final Rule, please visit the “Country of Origin Labeling” link at www.r-calfusa.com, or contact R-CALF USA Communications Coordinator Shae Dodson to request a copy. # # # R-CALF USA (Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America) is a national, non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring the continued profitability and viability of the U.S. cattle industry. R-CALF USA represents thousands of U.S. cattle producers on trade and marketing issues. Members are located across 47 states and are primarily cow/calf operators, cattle backgrounders, and/or feedlot owners. R-CALF USA has dozens of affiliate organizations and various main-street businesses are associate members. For more information, visit www.r-calfusa.com or, call 406-252-2516. |
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This page was last updated on Wednesday, December 24, 2008. |
