10/02/08 Getting Country of Origin Labeling Going

Getting Country of Origin Labeling Going. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. The food you eat comes from many parts of the world and the U.S. government has finally gotten around to making sure you know exactly where. It's called Country of Origin Labeling or COOL for short and it is officially being implemented according to USDA Under Secretary, Bruce Knight. KNIGHT: We'll be working with the retail establishments over the next six months under an informed compliance approach, working with them very closely, making sure they are implementing Country of Origin labeling in a manner which will provide to consumers the information that they are looking for. This will apply to produce, to red meats, and will be very much in keeping with the rules that are already in place on fish and shellfish. There is some question as to who actually will have to provide proper labeling. Lloyd Day, Administrator of USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service explains. DAY: The retailer is where this marketing law is going to occur. A "retailer" is defined as: "Any person licensed as a retailer under the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act." This was put into the first (COOL proposed) legislation in 2002. And what that means, the definition of a retailer includes only those retailers handling fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables with an invoice value of at least $230,000. That means a fish market is exempt, a butcher shop is exempt -- and it's really your larger grocery stores across the nation that are covered and who must label for these products. Yesterday was the end of the formal comment period and the USDA will be studying those comments and it will take some time to get to full implementation according to Day. DAY: So what's next for AMS and for USDA? We are going to fully implement the COOL statute according to the 2008 farm bill. We're going to go into conduct industry education and outreach for six months to ensure that people will come into compliance. We're going to continue the retail surveillance for fish and shellfish. We're going to train our state cooperators. And then starting in April, we're going to begin the retail surveillance for the balance of the covered commodities. Most everyone I've talked to thinks that country of origin labeling is a very positive move for the government and Knight echoes that. KNIGHT: I think when everybody stands back, takes a look at the implementation of Country of Origin Labeling, they will find that USDA has taken a very pragmatic approach to implementation and has done this in a very common-sense manner. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.