Country of origin labels about to arrive at your favorite store

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By ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star

Many Nebraska consumers may well be oblivious to the Sept. 30 implementation date for country of origin labeling of fresh meat in food stores.

But there are plenty other people paying much closer attention to the sweeping impact of federal law, including Larry Junker of the Fairbury Livestock Co.

As the six-month phase-in begins, farmers in Jefferson and surrounding counties must be able to affirm that the cattle they’re bringing to Tuesday sales in Fairbury were born in the United States. In the rare event that they were born in Canada, Mexico or somewhere else, they must attest to that.

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A shopper checks the country of origin of beef at a store in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo. (Yomiuri Shimbun/KRT)

A shopper checks the country of origin of beef at a store in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo. (Yomiuri Shimbun/KRT)

On the consumer end, restaurants are exempt, but packages in food stores will have to carry labels that reflect where  animals were born, where they were raised and where they were slaughtered.

“I don’t think it’s really a bad thing,” Junker said. “It doesn’t need to be made up by some consumer whiz. It can be on low scale. When we deal with farmers here, we don’t need to make it all high-tech and blow it out of proportion.”

A single sheet of paper that provides a list of cattle, a U.S. connection and a signature should suffice at sale barns.

One reason consumers may be unaware of the labeling change is that country of origin requirements go all the way back to the 2002 farm bill. Since then, there have been several delays in getting new procedures into the marketplace and several attempts to make them less of a burden to producers, processors and others in the meat supply line.

Especially when the retail packages contain ground beef, often made with trimmings mixed together from multiple sources, the end result may be accurate, but not especially specific.

“It could be labeled as the production of the United States, Mexico, Canada and Australia,” said Jim Robb of the Livestock Marketing Information Center in Lakewood, Colo.

Six years of stops and starts may seem a long time, but the origins of country of origin labeling actually go back much further than that, said John Hansen of the Nebraska Farmers Union.

“We initiated the idea of country of origin labeling in the Nebraska Farmers Union convention in 1984,” Hansen said, “and that was the first time I ever saw that concept. If it was out there before somewhere, I’m unaware of it.”

Almost 25 years later — amid anxieties about E. coli bacteria and mad cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) — the Farmers Union leader thinks consumers may find some comfort in labels that offer basic information on product background.

“I’ve seen polling data that indicates that a very high percentage of consumers would like to know where products come from,” he said. “And as we continue to have BSE issues in Canada, I think U.S. consumers are right to want to know where meat products came from.”

That, however, doesn’t mean consumers were the driving force for the new labels. Much of the impetus actually came from U.S. meat producers, who sensed some marketing advantage.

Producers were also a factor in all the stops and starts since then as Congress and the U.S. Department of Agriculture responded.

Michael Kelsey, executive vice president of the Nebraska Cattlemen, said members of the state’s largest livestock organization support labeling. But Kelsey also acknowledged second thoughts from some about a system so specific that it would identify point of origin right down to the individual feedlot level.

If, for example, meat bacteria proliferated because a meatpacker failed to properly refrigerate some meat, “there was a concern that there could be traceback, that I would be held accountable for something that I didn’t have any input on.”

The end result of legislating and regulating is not nearly that specific. And it’s hard to predict how consumers will react to ground beef labels that, in a given case, might list two or more countries of origin.

When it comes to beef demand in stores, said Kelsey, “it remains to be seen if a product with a multiple label from different countries is an advantage or a disadvantage.”

Uncertain impact isn’t likely to stop various players in the country of origin progression from proceeding.

The five Hy-Vee stores in Lincoln are in the loop, said Chris Friesleben from company headquarters in West Des Moines, Iowa.

Food stores have known this was coming for a long time, Friesleben said, “but it’s only been in the last several weeks that we’ve gotten specific instructions about the wording on labeling, what can be acceptable.”

Although there’s a six-month window for getting up to speed,  “we still expect to be about 90 percent in compliance by the end of this month,” she said.

Beyond that, “we’ve been in touch with packing plants that process our meat and send to us. And they, too, are working feverishly to get packages marked at the plant so that they arrive in stores already marked.”

The Nebraska Cattlemen’s Kelsey doesn’t pretend to know how country of origin labels will be received among meat purchasers.

“I can show you surveys that say they very much care,” he said. “I can show you surveys that say it doesn’t really matter. What we’re interested in, at the end of the day, is how do consumers vote with their dollars, not necessarily what they say in surveys.”

Reach Art Hovey at 473-7223 or at ahovey@journalstar.com.