Foreign beef labeling regs coming soon

September, 2008 has been the deadline for some years to impliment mandatory Country of Origin (COOL) beef labeling. Narrowly passed by a tiny margin in Congress, opponents were successful in putting it off, but never able to get Congress to take the issue back up and clarify the procedure.

USDA is forced by language in the old farm bill that is operating on an extentsion, to promulgate regulations to implement COOL. It will do so by mid-summer, officials say. They could either simply allow an affidavit to be signed, stating a carcasses' country of origin, or could make it an extremely bureaucratic and complicated procedure that could be very costly to beef producers and packers.

In something of a star chamber proceeding, USDA has not really tipped its hand. The big hope is that Congress will pass a new farm bill by fall, with clarifying language on COOL. This is unlikely, due to the very narrow Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress making it impossible to forge a consensus on a new farm bill. More likely, the current farm bill will be extended in the crush to adjoin for fall electioneering, leaving it to a new administration to crank out a farm bill.

COOL is one of those great ideas in theory that is not so great in practice. Sure it would probably cut down foreign beef sales in the U.S. if all the packages were labeled. But this is a two-way street and forces U.S. beef to be labeled in foreign countries. The whole certification procedure promises to be an expensive one for the beef industry, as it will have trouble passing the cost along to consumers.

In a tough livestock economy, with high energy and grain prices sapping profits for producers, a heavy surcharge for labeling foreign beef is probably not helpful.

But it looks like the industry is stuck, as Congress dithers and fails to pass farm legislation.