Despite widespread support from consumers and farmers, country-of-origin labeling – known as “COOL” – is not required for food. The fresh and frozen food you buy in grocery stores does not have to be labeled with information about where it was produced. 

Most of us are used to seeing labels that tell us where our clothes, electronics, toys, dishes, and even cars are produced. So why don’t we know where our tomatoes, cantaloupe, and ground beef come from? Despite widespread support from consumers and farmers, country-of-origin labeling – known as “COOL” – is not required for food. The fresh and frozen food you buy in grocery stores does not have to be labeled with information about where it was produced.

Who Doesn’t Want You to Know?

Click here to get the PDF

If grocery store chains, large food processors and other agribusinesses have their way, you’ll remain in the dark. They don’t want you to know that tomatoes, peppers and other fruits and vegetables are being imported from Mexico and Chile, that meat is coming from Brazil and Argentina, and that garlic, apples and even poultry are being shipped from China.

Food companies, particularly those with a multinational reach, are increasingly dealing in low-cost agricultural imports. That’s great for corporate profits. But the downside for consumers is that food safety, water quality, pesticide and labor standards in many other countries are weaker than those in the United States. You might pay less for your fruit, vegetables and meat, but you could run a higher risk of getting sick.

Most consumers don’t realize that grocery stores can sell meat bearing a U.S. Department of Agriculture stamp that actually was produced in slaughterhouses and processing plants abroad. Many of these facilities are not required to obey the same rules as U.S. facilities, and they are not subject to scrutiny by U.S. government inspectors. There are similar lapses in the regulation of fruit and vegetable production, and the government only inspects about one percent of the food imported into the United States.

Recent years have brought some high-profile examples of food safety problems linked to imported food. In 2003, the country’s first case of mad cow disease was discovered in Washington, in a cow that was raised in Canada. Also in 2003, a hepatitis outbreak killed three people and sickened 600, after they ate green onions produced in Mexico with contaminated water.

With our food already traveling thousands of miles on average before reaching our tables and food imports increasing every year, it’s past time for consumers to receive basic information about where their food was produced.

How Farmers Are Affected

Tens of thousands of U.S. farmers and ranchers have gone out of business over the past five years as agricultural imports have soared. Hundreds of tomato growers in Florida, to name just one example, have folded because of cheap imports from Mexico.

COOL would give U.S. farmers and ranchers a way to distinguish their products from those coming from other countries. About half of U.S. states already have marketing programs for locally produced foods, including “California Grown” and “Missouri Pride,” capitalizing on consumers’ interest in supporting homegrown products.

Surveys consistently show that over 80 percent of Americans want to know where their food comes from. Polls of consumers also show that they don’t trust the meat, grocery, and food processing industries to provide this information voluntarily – in one 2007 poll, 82 percent said they thought COOL should be required, rather than a voluntary guideline. More than 200 farming, ranching, food safety and consumer groups support country-of-origin labeling and have been working together for years to get mandatory COOL established nationwide.

The Origins of COOL

Congress actually approved a mandatory COOL law in 2002 that covered beef, pork, lamb, fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables, fish, shellfish, and peanuts. But the food industry persuaded Congress to delay its implementation until 2008 for all foods except seafood, which went into effect as scheduled in 2004.

Groups such as the Grocery Manufacturers of America, the Food Products Association, and National Pork Producers Council have used the delay to try to kill the program outright. They got some help from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which came up with outrageously inflated estimates of the cost of implementing the law, and ignored commonsense proposals from farmers and ranchers about how to use existing information to provide consumers with country of origin labeling. Most U.S. trading partners – about 60 countries, including Canada and Mexico – already have such laws on the books. And eight states have similar laws in place, including Florida, Louisiana and Maine.