Don’t Label Me!
I’m not really into labels but there are a few things that you can learn from them. For instance, my extremely fashionable shirt was made in Turkey, my 20oz water bottle was made in China, and fairly-paid, disabled workers made my tote bag in Cambodia.
Country of origin labeling (COOL) is supposed to do for meat, seafood, and produce what it has done for my shirt, water bottle, and tote bag. That is to say, consumers would finally know where their food comes from -- something they just might want considering the USDA’s recent approval of processed poultry product imports from China (a country with less than stellar food safety practices and currently suffering from an avian influenza epidemic.)
When we inquired about this decision and about actually implementing COOL (which was included in the 2002 Farm Bill), the USDA replied that, under the current restrictions:
- The People’s Republic of China (PRC) can only import fully-cooked product into the United States.
- All products that are imported are required to be marked with the country of origin.
- Products removed from their original packaging to be further processed do NOT have to mark the country of origin.
- Fully-cooked product is more likely to be imported in retail packaging and therefore not processed further.
Translation: “A lot of poultry product from the PRC will be labeled. Our well-orchestrated loopholes will allow the rest to go unmarked. It’s best to just not think about it.”
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